Rants of a hyphenated researcher

Nationalizing reality: Part I. A Prostitution Ring, a Minister, and Another Sorry Tale of Nationalism.

2010-03-24T15:55:00.000-07:00

While living in Bosnia I have realized the extent to which nationalism has infected the perception of reality itself. The coexistence of equally provable but mutually exclusive truths—all of which feel they have been wronged but undefeated in the recent war—has made interpretation of daily events, from the most banal to most consequential, impossible through the lens of objectivity. I will illustrate this argument by analyzing several recent events in the country, starting with the Srebrenica/Bratunac prostitution affair. I will discuss other events in following posts.

Last week the country was shocked by the news that the police of Republika Srpska (RS, the Serbian entity) raided several high profile institutions in the towns of Srebrenica (the place of the 1995 genocide) and Bratunac, arresting more than a dozen of public figures, accusing them of their involvement in prostitution, trafficking, and sexual exploitation of a minor. Almost simultaneously, officials from the Ministry of Interior were interviewing Bosnia’s Minister of Security (akin to US’ Homeland Security Chief) Ahmetovic for his supposed involvement in the aforementioned activities. The whole action was carried out in front of cameras with all the major channels replaying the images of people being hauled into police vans by ski-mask wearing SWAT teams. From the little information the RS Ministry released one could piece together the tragic preface to the dramatic culmination: a 15 year old Roma girl from Srebrenica had been lured into prostitution by her own grandmother and serviced (often under the influence of cocaine) the local elites, including the town’s imam (Muslim priest), her school’s principal, a professor, and—most shockingly—the Minister of Security of Bosnia, Ahmetovic, who at the time was a Srebrenica official. He had just been recently appointed to the highly sensitive security post. The girl was found drugged and placed into protective custody when she (supposedly) revealed the names of the people who were later arrested and questioned (in the case of Ahmetovic). I, like anyone with any sense of decency, reacted to the news with fury, hoping all of those involved would be punished to the full extent of the law. I was especially depressed by the fact that one of the country’s high-profile ministers, and the one I had thought was fairly efficient and non-corrupt, Ahmetovic had been intimately involved in the graphic affair. As it turned out however, the Bosnian reality was much more complicated than the Hollywood-like story the RS Ministry of Interior told the public.

On the day of the raids, the visibly upset Ahmetovic came in front of TV cameras and swore his innocence, claiming that he was being set up by his political enemies in the Serbian entity. Coincidentally or not, the whole sting operation had been carried out by a Bosnian Serb official who had been involved in another affair that Ahmetovic was investigating. The affair centered around the release by the Bosnian Serb police of a list of 45 Bosnian humanitarian organizations—mostly Muslim—suspected of terrorism. The list, leaked to the UN Security Council turned out to be a forgery and Ahmetovic threatened on TV to carry out a full investigation and punish those responsible for denigrating the work of many humanitarian organizations—who had nothing to do with terrorism—and exposing them to retaliatory action from the US who was monitoring these lists. Again, coincidentally or not, Ahmetovic made the promise to investigate the “list of 45 affair” THE NIGHT BEFORE the prostitution sting unfolded. Ahmetovic explained that the only contact he had had with the Roma girl was when he awarded her a scholarship to help her complete high school since her family was destitute. He professed his belief in God and his own innocence and continued to carry out his daily duties. Keep in mind, this is the post akin to US’ Homeland Security Chief. So, a day after he was interrogated for his involvement in the affair of prostitution of a minor, Ahmetovic was meeting with EU security officials to talk about Bosnia’s path to the EU integration!

The story had another twist. The day after the highly publicized raids, all but two of the people arrested were released due to the “lack of evidence.”! My question immediately was: then why the hell were they arrested in the first place?! For the most part, these were people with public profiles—a teacher, an imam, a professor—and their reputation suffered a terrible blow. The only two people who continued to be imprisoned were girl’s grandmother and her high school principal. I thought to myself: “Ok, they are probably the ring-leaders and they are co-operating.” I was wrong. Two days later, the two remaining “suspects” were released! There was absolutely no explanation from the relevant courts, judge(s), or the Bosnian Serb police. Nothing. The dust settled as fast as it had been thrown into the eyes of the Bosnian public.

The story had yet another twist. A day or so after the incident, a Bosnian weekly magazine suggested that the Bosnian Minister of Security Ahmetovic was not as innocent as he appeared. The magazine—without any evidence whatsoever—implied that Ahmetovic had a dark past and that the Bosnian Serb police orchestrated the raid as a warning to him not to meddle in anything that might disturb the status quo which was enriching a lot of people within the Serbian entity in Bosnia. It is also important to note, that this is an election year in Bosnia and the whole affair was interpreted—almost by everyone—as a complicated political game ahead of the October elections.

The affair divided the Bosnian public fairly predictably. The Bosnian Muslim officials—including religious figures—immediately compared the Serbian raid to a second Srebrenica genocide (obnoxiously invoking the memory of the 1995 genocide repeatedly!) and expressed unequivocal support for “their” Minister Ahmetovic. Thus, disregarding the fact that Ahmetovic was a minister of all Bosnians, including the Serbs. The Serbian officials pointed to the Muslim reaction as evidence that Bosnia’s jurisprudence was not working, that there was no trust in the Serb part of the country, and that the whole Bosnian project may not be working. The Croats issued muted statements about the need to let the system do its job, but for the most part, observed the whole spectacle with amused exhaustion.

The most devastating consequence of the publicized affair was the moronic, if not criminal, decision by many Bosnia’s newspapers and magazines to publish the picture of the underage Roma girl who was the only true victim in this story. Her picture plastered all over the front pages of many of the newspapers not only exposed the girl to further public shame, ridicule, or even threats, intimidation or worse from her old “customers,” but it also violated the UN Convention on the Rights of Child, which prohibits minors in these kinds of cases from being named, let alone from having their picture plastered on the news.

I consider myself a well informed resident (I am not sure if I am still a citizen) of this country. I read two daily newspapers, two main weeklies (well one since I no longer buy the one that published the picture of the Roma girl), and follow internet portals. I also watch the evening news and most of the main political talk shows (yes, I have no social life). I also consider myself fairly anational, if not anti-national, in the context of Bosnia, which is to say I don’t think I have any of my “favorites” among the country’s ethnic groups. And yet, I have no idea what the true story is in this messy case. The way the events played out, were interpreted, and re-interpreted, and the way it impacted people split so neatly along national lines that it is impossible for anyone concerned with truth to come anywhere near it. So, how can people make informed choices about their leaders, about the events that surround them in this nationalism-polluted environment? The obsession with national identity has truly flooded every aspect of reality, infecting the very interpretation of it. No wonder conspiracy theories find such fertile ground here!

Next post: the case of Ejup Ganic.

Why We Should be Happy with the Health Care Bill

2009-12-20T03:49:00.001-08:00

The shrillness of the contentious partisan debate surrounding the health care reform has truly drowned out any rational discussion of it (and here I am blaming all sides). In particular, I have to say I have been disappointed with some on the left who have reacted to Reid's stripping of the public option from the bill in such a knee-jerk reaction that they single handedly obscured many good things that are in this bill and that make liberals' threat to kill the bill sound like an act of lunacy. Here are some of the things that make this bill an historic attempt to reform the health care system in America, and that should make all of us progressives giddy as we await President Obama's signature. To quote Paul Krugman in today's NYT: "Count me among those who consider this an awesome achievement. It’s a seriously flawed bill, we’ll spend years if not decades fixing it, but it’s nonetheless a huge step forward."

Let me group the good things in this bill under three themes.

ACCESS AND AFFORDABILITY.
--The bill extends coverage to 30 million Americans by offering government subsidies to those who earn less than 400% of federal poverty level and by expanding both Medicaid and the CHIP (Child Health Insurance Program). Analysts estimate that some 94% of Americans will have access to affordable health insurance because of this bill. This fact alone should be enough for any progressive to support this bill.

--Many low-income people who previously have not been eligible for Medicaid, will now be covered. It raises the eligibility level to 133% of the federal poverty rate. It further expands the wonderfully successful Child Health Insurance Program.

--It mandates that every state establish an insurance exchange program which will be available on the Internet, and which will basically be a list of all insurance programs available in your area that you can buy into. The language has to be simple and uniform for all insurance programs with no small print. In addition it mandates that the Health and Human Services Secretary sign a contract with the Federal Insurance provider that currently insures our Congresspeople to create a national insurance program that we will all be able to buy into.

--It expands the age of dependent coverage to 26, so if you are fresh out of college, you can be on your parents' insurance until 26. (I could have used this after college).

CUTTING COST
The bill makes serious attempts at cutting health care costs.

A lot has been made of Senator Reid's stripping of both the public option and Medicare expansion from the bill in winning the support of the so-called centrist Democrats and the former Democrat Joe Libermann. Now, don't get me wrong, even a brief appearance of that sorry excuse for a human being named Joe Libermann makes me cringe, but it is far from certain that either the public option or the Medicare expansion would by themselves solve the skyrocketing health care costs. The New Yorker had a brilliant article about this a few months back in which it argued even with the public option, health care costs would continue to skyrocket, increase our deficit, bankrupt Medicare, etc, if we did not change our health care compensation system (by ending the disastrous pay-for-quantity rather than quality, system). The Medicare expansion proposal was even more problematic as it would saddle the government with an enermous bill and funding for it was far from certain, creating the potential for an even more monstrous deficit and the possible insolvency of Medicare. So, how does this bill attempt to cut cost?

First it recognizes that we don't really know how exactly to cut cost. It acknowledges there is no one silver bullet to solve our problem. European countries, including those who have a single payer system (France) or those who have a mixture of single payer and private insurance (Germany) have struggled to keep their costs down and their health care delivery systems functioning. So, there is no easy solution.

The Senate health care bill creates numerous pilot programs to test the ways of cutting cost. Most innovations come in Medicare. It establishes experimental programs for Medicare to pay hospitals in bundles rather than for each operation and hospital visit, thus providing incentives for doctors to share their evaluations of patients, effectiveness of medical procedures, follow up hospital visits to reduce the number of second-hospital visits for each patient. It establishes the so-called Accountable Care Organizations which would pool all these methods and share the savings that come from them.

It creates the Medicare Advisory Board which would conduct thorough evidence-based research on methods, procedures (including testing), all with the purpose of figuring out which health care delivery systems work, and which do not. Most importantly, the recommendations that the Medicare Advisory Board makes to Congress will become EFFECTIVE AUTOMATICALLY lest the Congress pass measures that would make savings equivalent to those proposed by the Board.

The bill also empowers the Health and Human Services Secretary to coordinate all pilots programs and report to Congress.

--It also establishes a number of community-level wellness programs and prevention programs that promote preventive care, including school based programs. And it makes all preventive care free by prohibiting insurance companies from charging out-of-pocket fees.

As an article in the last New Yorker argued, a pilot program is how the US reformed its troubled agriculture system in the early 20th century. There is no reason to believe that these pilot programs cannot do the same in health care. In fact, it is the only way we can figure out how exactly to tamp down these costs.

INSURANCE REGULATION
--The bill imposes serious regulation on the previously barely-regulated insurance industry. Starting in 2014, it prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, from upping premiums for people who get sick (or dropping them altogether), charging different fees based on gender, it limits the amount insurance companies can spend on their administrative costs, and the amount they can charge in annual out-of-pocket expenses; and prohibits them from setting up an arbitrary annual limit it will pay for individuals.
--It also mandates that each insurance company create an accessible appeals process open to every customer through which he/she will be able to contest a denied claim. (I could have used this back in 2003 when an insurance company refused to pay for an expensive medical procedure I had had, and because of which I had to incur some debt).

There are many more things in this bill that are good, but these are the main ones that caught my attention.

Considering all these things that are in the bill, I cannot understand how anyone can fathom voting against it (unless you are a heartless Republican of course). It does so many good things that us progressives should be happy about. And this is why I shall be opening a bottle of the bubbly when President Obama finally signs the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law sometime in January.

Calling on Mr. Abraham Lincoln. Pragmatism and Solving the Bosnian Impasse

2009-10-24T01:54:00.000-07:00

As Bosnia-Herzegovina plunges into yet another constitutional crisis, and the threads of the very state seem to be unraveling, I have been thinking a lot about pragmatism. Americans and Europeans are once again secluded in a Sarajevo military base with all the political bigshots, trying to come up with a solution. I have been toying with some ideas that I wanted to flesh out. Some of them are provocative (for the domestic audience), but I wanted to think of radical solutions to these problems, and stir up some discussion. My main argument is that the country needs a radical pragmatic solution and that the words of the eternally pragmatic Abraham Lincoln are instructive in how to achieve this.

For those not familiar with the current political system of the country, let me give you a brief background.

BACKGROUND (*For those familiar with the region feel free to scroll down to the next paragraph).
Dayton Bosnia is a country with a constitution "worthy of a zen master" to paraphrase an anthropologist of the region. While enjoying some symbolic attributes of an independent, sovereign state, its internal sovereignty is non-existent. 49% of its territory is taken up by the Serb entity (Republika Srpska) and 51% by the Federation of Croats and Muslims. Each entity has a two-tiered parliament, prime ministers with entire cabinets, and each entity has the right to block any decision of the weak central government. The latter is mostly represented by the three-member presidency (Serb, Croat, Bosniak) whose constitutional powers are so minimal that makes the entire idea of a Bosnian state laughable; and the Council of Minister, but whose powers, are again, are limited and vulnerable to veto. The power is further devolved to the cantons (10 of them) and canton governments have jurisdiction over areas as important as educational policy. Then finally, the power devolution ends at the municipal level with the mayor and the city council. In short, Bosnia has 14 parliaments! The overlapping jurisdictions of power are so complex that the country needs a zen master to interpret the laws.

STALEMATE OF IDEALS
The Dayton Peace Agreement--which is the constitution of the country (oh yes, and we do not own a copy of it since the original one is in Paris!)--has cemented the hold of nationalist powers in each entity and each canton, and the result is a perpetual political paralysis. Besides making it impossible to ever enter into the EU, the structure reflects the stalemate of ideals which is the heart of the problem and which the war never resolved.

In short, Bosnia is an unwieldy conglomeration of (still) warring ideals.

The Serbs believe that the reason they spilled their blood was to create an exclusively Serb entity that can buffer them from any Muslim-Croat domination or worse, a repeat of the WWII-era massacres. They argue to the point of exhaustion that they never voted for Bosnia to succeed from Yugoslavia and never agreed to live in a single state with the other two people. This ideal is rooted in the early mid-to-late 19th century nationalist idea of peasant democracy, but is mixed in with the fears of genocide that came out of the WWII experience, and has then been filtered through the recent war which is seen as a delayed Serbian response to WWII.

The Croats, who make up the tiniest percentage of the population (17% or so), feel completely marginalized in the Federation. They point out that the constitution gave the Serbs and the Muslims their own entities while relegating them to the permanent minority status. As a constituent people they want their own entity and until then, they are holding onto the Herzegovinian capital Mostar as "the only Croat city" in the country. Their ideal is also rooted in the late 19th century notion of Croatianness, but mixed in with the feelings of guilt (due to the Croat role in WWII), and deep frustration with the failure of the Croatian state to absorb the Herzegovinian Croats during the last war.

The Bosniaks might be the most divided and the most embittered. As the last group in the region to emerge as an ethnic category (only in the mid 20th century) they are also the most divided. The right-wing is seething with revanchist urges and wants Republika Srpska destroyed, claiming it is the direct product of the genocide in Srebrenica. Seeing no need for any devolution of power, the Bosniak right-wing wants a unitary Bosnian state with the "one man, one vote" principle that does not recognize the ethnic complexity of the country and the history of violence. The left-wing would agree to some devolution, but still sees Republika Srpska as the main obstacle to a better future. The still fresh, daily narrated memory of the Srebrenica genocide is the unifying force between all the fractions within the Bosniak political establishment.

The problem is that the war did not DEFEAT any of these ideals. All of the ideals are inherently democratic expressions of the majority of the people who vote (and keep voting) for the same parties. Despite criticizing the Communists for giving people utopian promises, all of the nationalist ideals are essentially utopian in that they promise a never-reached future in which the national being will be fulfilled. But these ideals are incompatible with one another, making the daily political life a zero-sum game that has to end either in a stalemate, or another war. So, rather than being conniving self-interested politicians (and they are), these nationalist politicians are also idealists many of whom genuinely believe they are representing "the will of the people." The sense of grievance--that goes back to WWII, if not earlier--and that is powerful within all three ethnic establishments is truly the most dangerous result of the Dayton stalemate.

PRAGMATISM. So, what this country needs is to reject utopian idealism and embrace pragmatism. Pragmatism is the only way we can push ourselves through the stalemate, and create a workable everyday solution. The practical consequence of a pragmatic approach is to look at the country not the way we want it to be (whoever "WE" are), but the way it is, and then come up with the best workable solution, which would entail the following two steps.

1) Stop talking about the war! All the politicians have to agree to separate the memories and narratives of the war from any political solution. This entails a painful acceptance by many that the country is basically ethnically clean in most places. But it would also mean that politicians need to stop using the word genocide. Used as a negotiating card, the memory of the war will always inevitably block any agreement.

2) Offer Republika Srpska the Presidency of Bosnia in return for meaningful, irreversible constitutional changes that would empower the central state. This sounds like the most outrageous claim, but I think it offers a real shot at preserving the state of Bosnia. What is the reason Bosnia fell apart as a state? It is because over 90% of the Bosnian Serbs did not accept its legitimacy and instead organized themselves into what became known as Republika Srpska (the Croat and Bosniak separatist projects were a response to this and came later). So, the Americans and Europeans need to go to Milorad Dodik, the Prime Minister of Republika Srpska and the most powerful politician in the country, and offer him the first mandate as the President of Bosnia if he would accept constitutional changes. Besides pleasing the ego of Mr. Dodik, the offer would also enfranchise millions of Serbs who would have something to identify with at the highest levels of the Bosnian state. It would also alleviate fears of the state's encroachment on Serb interests, the underlying cause of the war in the first place. Further, it would inject Dodik's political capital into the institution. Before accepting the newly created position, Dodik would have to agree to: 1) never again challenge the legitimacy of the Bosnian state; 2) never again to bring up the massacres. In return, the international community would also grant him a lifetime immunity from prosecution for his previous financial crimes (not future ones in case he commits them) in return for his service to the state. The immunity could be revoked in case he reneged on the deal.

Now, I know this is impossible. For this to happen, Bosniak and Croat politicians would have to convince their constituencies that this would be in their interest. They would have to be convinced that this would offer a long-term solution that would create a viable Bosnian state way past Dodik's time. The problem in this country is that there has been too much focus on personalities without looking at the institutions. Dodik will go away sooner or later and it is what he leaves behind that is more important. There is also a possibility that Dodik would not agree, but his ego, his fear of prosecution for his financial crimes, and his desire for more power, would definitely make him think twice before rejecting such an offer. Given that he is undeniably popular with the Serbs this would also boost their view of the state in its abstract. Dodik's nemesis, the leader of the one of the largest Bosniak parties, Haris Silajdzic would be picked as the VP with substantive powers (while at the same time making sure that these could not cause a paralysis of the central government).

For such political experiments to happen, this country needs a politician(s) like Abraham Lincoln. At his Second Inaugural, after some 620,000 American soldiers had lost their lives, entire South laid in ruins, and the North had emerged triumphant, Lincoln said:

"The will of God prevails — In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is somewhat different from the purpose of either party — and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect this."

It is hard to imagine today how shocking these words must have sounded to many in the US. Both, the South and the North having been convinced in the righteousness of their cause must have been disappointed, the former with a military defeat and the latter with its leader's attempt to reconcile both narratives into one. With that speech alone, he did just that.

Bosnia needs an Abraham Lincoln.

My Take on the Gates Arrest Controversy

2009-07-27T11:44:00.000-07:00

I cannot help but think about the Gates arrest through the prism of my own experience. While I do not wish to imply that I understand what it feels like to be a black man in America during an encounter with a white cop, after reading about the arrest, I was reminded of my own experience in encountering an authority that once upon a time thought of me as a threat.

In late summer 2001 I was wrapping up my vacation in Mostar and was on a bus to Zagreb, along with my grandfather, from where I would fly back to the US. The southern border at Vinjani, between Croatia and Bosnia, is a primary target for all kinds of smugglers and the EU has been pushing Croatia and Bosnia hard to crack down on this border if they were ever to join the EU club. As our bus made its way along the rocky, nausea inducing winding roads of Western Herzegovina I was beginning to fall asleep next to my grandfather who was wide awake. It was my grandfather who woke me up from my hazy sleep, saying: "We are at Vinjani", the border crossing. A polite Croatian police officer walked into the bus and asked everyone to take out their passports. At this time I still carried my Bosnian passport along with my recently issued American Green Card. I handed the police officer the passport and the Green Card. After staring at it suspiciously, he asked me to step off the bus. At this point, I immediately became furious.

Now, an outsider looking at the situation could say "Well, he was disrespectful to the police officer. The officer has a tough job, blah blah blah." But the only reason an outsider could not comprehend my response if he/she did not know the history of my encounters with the Croatian police in general and in particular, my interaction with the border police at this particular border crossing.

In the scorching summer days of 1993--as the war between Croats and Muslims in Mostar exploded into a daily face-to-face, street by street combat--the Vinjani border crossing became both, a symbol of hope for Mostarci who wanted to escape the fighting, and a menacing obstacle for Muslim men trying to secretly pass into Croatia and escape the Bosnian Croat army concentration camps which had popped like mushrooms all over Herzegovina in the early summer of that year. In June 1993, my mother and I were leaving the city on a bus a day after my brother and my father had escaped the city in a cab of a known smuggler. Our original plan was to meet up in Split but we did not know if my brother and my father had actually made it the night before. Our anxiety about their fate was mixed up with our fear, if not panic, about the Vinjani border crossing. We had heard stories of Croat police taking all Muslims off the bus and then taking them in an unknown direction, probably to concentration camps, or worse. At the border, the Croat police took everyone off the bus, and then proceeded to rummage through everyone's baggage, take everyone's IDs and hoard us into the small police station under the scorching sun. A Muslim man begged an officer to let him pass as his son was suffering from epilepsy and looked like he was about to pass out. The soldier laughed at him (in front of my very own eyes) and called him a "pussy" for crying. The man, along with his son was hauled away in a police van. When it came our turn, my mother produced her birth certificate which showed clearly her Croatian heritage: her father was born in Split and her mother in Zagreb. The officer looked at the birth certificate and laughed at the Serbian spelling of my mother's name (Snezana as opposed to the Croatian version "Snjezana") shouting "Oh you are not a real Croat, look at your name." At this, my mother (a tiny woman) snapped the certificate out of his hands and told him that "I am a bigger Croat than you will ever be!" At this, the officer asked her to accompany him to a separate room in the police station at which I immediately pushed my way between him and my mother and followed them at the annoyance of the officer. I was terrified of what might happen in that room. As soon as we walked into the room, the officer changed his demeanor apologized to my mother justifying his behavior by saying he "didn't know you were Croats." My mother demanded he let us through. At this, he sighed, stamped our documents and we were on our way (on a much emptier bus this time) to Croatia where we re-united with my father and my brother.

So when I was asked to step off the bus almost exactly 8 years after this nightmarish incident, the first memory that popped into my mind was of the thug who treated us like dirt and worse of all who might have harmed that man and his epilepsy-stricken son. But this time, I had a green card and felt empowered. I told the police officer that I will not step off the bus until he tells me the reason for this. At this my grandfather politely told the police officer that I am a student in America and that I am on my way "home." The officer persisted: "this bus will not leave until you step off and follow me to the police station." I kid you not, but this was the same police station from the summer of 1993. But I honestly could not feel any fear probably because I was so angry. In the station, I demanded to know why I was taken off the bus. Then I realized that the incident arose out of the officer's confusion regarding the Green Card. He kept asking me what this document meant. In my attempt to clout myself into a more powerful status, I told him it meant that I was "under the protection of the US government" and that the document was tantamount to a US passport. He then proceeded to make small talk asking me why and for how long I had been in Mostar. I told him, in a very rude manner, that I was there for two months and the reason for it was because this was "the only home I will ever have and that I can go there any time I'd like." He wrote down my green card number and instructed me that I was now free to go back to my bus. I snapped the green card out of his hands, like my mother had done the same with her birth certificate eight years earlier, and stormed out of the station. I remember the sound of the door slamming behind me. Actually, I remember regretting the slamming the moment I stepped out as I was afraid it might have given him an additional excuse to hold me. I climbed on the bus to find my grandfather absolutely terrified as to what might have happened to me. The entire bus was staring at me. Then and there I vowed I would get my American passport and next time would immediately ask to see US consular staff if I were hassled again. I was too upset to talk to my grandfather and only told him of what had happened once we got to Zagreb.

I could not help but think of this experience when reading about Gates' arrest. In my mind, the professor was completely justified in his reaction and it is the police officer who has to apologize.

The (Im)Probability of Getting a Good Night's Sleep in Champaign, Illinois

2009-07-17T12:33:00.001-07:00

Waking up at 6:00 AM, two hours before my alarm clock, for the third morning in a row, I thought I'd ruminate out loud, actually rant, about the infinitely minuscule probability that one can have a decent night of sleep in Champaign, particularly on the intersection of one of the many many many insanely and logic-twisting traffic-congested streets in this small town.

So, if I am woken up by the sounds of NPR's Morning Edition at 8AM refreshed after eight hours of sleep, this means that a series of events completely out of my control did not happen the previous night:

1) No insanely obese, sexually frustrated, and mentally challenged motorcyclists revved their penis-substitutes outside of my house, particularly between 1-2AM, which for whatever reason seems to be their favorite time slot.

2) The girl who lives next to me did not spend only a part of her night at her boyfriend's (or boyfriends') house only to be dropped off at 3 AM, literally outside my window, after which she almost ALWAYS proceeds to do her laundry while talking incessantly on her cell phone. Oh yes and the laundry is in the basement so close below my bedroom that I can see the laundry machine from a hole in my floor (I am not even kidding!). So, getting a good night sleep also means that she did not turn the drier off and on either putting her clothes through many cycles or doing a year's worth of laundry in one night!

3) The neighbors upstairs did not drag their furniture in the middle of the night, vacuum, or have an argument. By the way, I can hear them sneeze not to speak of other noises, which are (unfortunately for them and fortunately for me much rarer). It also means that my neighbor did not literally stamp on the floor as he was preparing for work only to slam the door behind him as if turning his anger for having to go to work at the poor wooden door and by extension, at the disgruntled Bosnian living beneath him.

4) The neighbor in the house next to mine did not start with the construction way before sunrise nor did he rev his own motorcycle which he keeps parked in a giant mobile garage right outside of my door (which blocks my sight as I am pulling out of my driveway--thanks a lot asshole!).

5) My soft-spoken and generally nice landlord did not come at 7AM (I guess before going to work) to do some shoveling and gardening (oh I forgot the mention, both the gravel and the garden are right OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW)!

6) Finally, it means that it is not Tuesday and the garbage truck did not pull into my driveway at 4AM incessantly beeping and taking for God knows how long to empty the giant trash container outside my window.

So as you can see, in order for me to get my eight hours of sleep in this town all these six conditions have to be met. And honestly, what are the chances of that? Slim to none, says the sleepy, cranky me.

Stop saying Obama is just like Bush!

2009-07-02T08:33:00.000-07:00

There is one thing that the right-wing and the far-left in this country agree on these days: President Barack Obama is much like President Bush in fighting the war on terror. Whatever your disagreement with Obama may be--and I have many, particularly on the so-called doctrine of prolonged detention--to compare his approach to Bush's is not only patently false, but it betrays a breathtaking lack of understanding of a long-running contest over the meaning of the Constitution.

From the internal memos, memoirs, and transcripts from the Bush administration--leaked in interviews, books, and Bush himself--it has become clear that Bush's approach to fighting terrorism was guided by one principle: unitary executive. The greatest advocate of this principle was of course Vice President Dick Cheney and his legal adviser David Addington who believed that at times of war (actually at all times, but particularly during a war), the President of the United States had an unchecked authority to abrogate any law the Congress made if the protection of the American people was the motivating factor of his decisions. This is the American version of Louis XIV's infamous creed: "L'etat, c'est moi." The Cheney crowd consisted of angry right-wingers who still felt slighted by the Congressional oversight of the Presidency instituted after the Watergate fiasco. They believed that in the aftermath of Watergate, the Presidency had made way too many concessions to Congress. The main real-life repercussion of this was the infamous "enemy combatant" doctrine.

According to the "enemy combatant" doctrine, the President of the United States had an unchecked, oversight-free, Constitutional power to declare any single human being on the planet--even if he or she was a US citizen--to be an enemy combatant and as such, could be imprisoned indefinitely as long as the "war on terror" goes on. The example of this was of course the case of the so-called "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla who was held for years in an army brig, and Al-Massari, who was held in isolation until this year when President Obama transferred him to a federal court where he plead guilty and got a long-prison term.

Obama's right-wing detractors and his supposedly betrayed left-wing critics lament his supposed continuation of Bush's policies, pointing to his doctrine of "preventive detention" and his continuation of military tribunals, to argue that other than being an eloquent defender of the Constitution, Obama is doing pretty much the same amount of damage to it as Bush had done, and is continuing his policy. FALSE!

The Obama approach to terrorism is guided by the respect for the Constitution. In every instance where he has to judge how to approach fighting terrorism, he has bent over backwards to stay as true to the Constitution as possible, and more importantly, to completely ABROGATE THE IDEOLOGY OF UNITARY EXECUTIVE! The last point is key to understanding how Obama's approach differs from Bush's. In every matter--from detaining terror suspects, to trying them, to attacking other countries in self-defense--President Obama has disputed the idea of unitary Executive. Instead, he has delegated many of the powers Bush claimed for himself to the Congress. For example, in the so-called preventive detention policy, Obama has set out clear and multi-layered oversight by the US Congress and the courts so that no one single man or a woman--even if they are the President of the US--can pass such profound judgment on the life of a human being. The same rule follows in military tribunals--while they are still not the same as our civil courts, they will be under the oversight of courts and many constitutional obligations are still in effect--such as the prohibition against torture-extracted evidence and the right to habeas corpus for the detainees.

Thus, Obama's complete abandonment of the term "war on terror," is more than a semantic exercise. It shows Obama's contempt for Bush's view of "unitary executive." By avoiding this term, Obama is also giving up the claim of the US Executive to some extraordinary "war" powers. In fact, this is exactly what many of us on the left wanted from the President: to treat our efforts to protect the US from terrorists more as a legal battle, than a war which would automatically authorize the President to use some unconstitutional powers. The closure of the GITMO, which will happen by January 2010, will be a powerfully symbolic, and also practical, proof of President Obama's continuing dismantling of Bush's illegal unitary executive doctrine.

Sometimes I think some on the left are unable or unwilling--or both--to recognize a good thing while we are experiencing it. And Obama's Presidency has definitely been a great thing for this country. Again, it is a healthy thing that many of us still disagree on him on many issues-including the preventive detention-but to argue that he is the same as Bush, is simply not true!

Republicans' failed experiment with sexuality

2009-06-27T06:59:00.001-07:00

The "disappearance" of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford this week shows the failure of the long-running GOP experiment with sexuality.

Mark Sanford's Danielle Steele-like romance with an Argentinian woman is an interesting human story not only due to the saucy details it contains, but also because it serves as another illustrative example of the never-ending hypocrisy of human beings. During his stint in Congress, Mark Sanford in 1999 called on President Bill Clinton to resign immediately following his own (less geographically adventurous) trip with Monica Lewinsky, because the President had, according to Sanford, betrayed the office by lying about his affair. When it became revealed (courtesy of Larry Flint) that the incoming Republican-Speaker of the House Livingstone, the main henchmen of the witch-hunt against Clinton, had also been in an affair, Sanford came down hard (pun intended) against his own Republican colleague, once again throwing his weight on the side of marital, and moral, purity. It was the same Sanford who, every time the issue of same sex marriage came up, defended his bigotry by arguing that he only wanted to "protect" traditional marriage.

Governor Sanford's blatant hypocrisy shows not some weakness that is endemic to the governor, but rather, the Republican instinct to deny reality in all circumstances. By trying to fit sexuality into neat, black-and-white, moral rubrics, the Republican right, particularly the religious wing, has always distorted reality in order to make their own sins sound better in their own heads. That is, seeing their own sexual impulse as some sort of "weakness," they immediately externalize it by painting it as a "sin," and then proceed to beat down their opponents with the stick of morality, hoping that this would not only offer them a cover from their own "weakness," but that it would help them deal with it internally, as if they are saying to themselves "I might be an adulterer, but at least I am fighting adultery in the society at large."

The Republicans will not become relevant in our political discourse until they stop distorting reality. Sexuality is an immensely fluid (pun intended) human experience where moral categories of "right" and "wrong," and "weakness" and "strength" and "purity" have always, inevitably, collapsed when confronted with reality. By trying to stuff these categories onto their own unwieldy sexual experiences, the Republicans will always, every single time (no exception), come off as idiotic, self-destructive hypocrites. And for this, they need to stay as away from our political discourse as possible! Because in this hypocrisy they have also become tiring.

But the reason why Governor Sanford should resign is not due to his hypocrisy--albeit, it has been fun to watch--but due to the fact that he has been a horrible governor and, umm, how shall I put this, well an asshole! This is the man who wanted to reject President Obama's stimulus money, to be used for the skyrocketing unemployment in the state, arguing, get this, that it would obligate the state to expand its unemployment requirements after the stimulus money runs out. Again, abstract, mean-nothing, principles trumping reality. Not once, did the governor think about REAL LIFE consequences of his actions before getting on the worn soap box and shouting nonsense to everyone who would and wouldn't listen. Oh, yes, and I forgot to mention, that the stimulus money he rejected, he would later use to fund his trip to Argentina (some $12,000) and was thankfully, rebuffed by the more sensible state legislature which overturned his veto, and accepted the money.

So, Governor, please let us all be, and just go away!

The Revolution Will be Televised

2009-06-21T17:40:00.000-07:00

Battle w/ Police - Tehran, Iran - June 20th 2009
by mightier-than

The Ongoing Iranian Revolution and the Obama Effect

2009-06-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

There are two indisputable facts about the events in Tehran: 1) we are witnessing a Revolution, the country's second in 30 years; and 2) the election of President Barack Obama and his subsequent overtures to Iran are inextricably linked to the events. Let me address these two main points in more detail.

There are several reasons why I see the events in Tehran and other major cities in Iran (esp. Shiraz) as a Revolution:

a) the demands of the protesters have escalated from a simple demand for an investigation into the election, then to a recount, then to the election annulment, and finally, to the open challenge of the Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei's authority. Yesterday's riots were a brazen defiance of the Ayatollah's demand that there would be no more riots and his coronation of Ahmedinejad as the winner of the election. As the Ayatollah is supposed to be a stand-in for the "hidden Imam,"--who according to Shi'a Islam is supposed to re-appear at any moment (something akin to Jewish' awaiting of the Messiah, or the Christian second coming of Christ)--the brave Iranians who took to the streets yesterday, with some shouting "death to Ayatollah," something that would have been unthinkable just a few months or even days ago, openly questioned the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic. We have to keep in mind that the Revolution of 1979 was an explosion of genuinely democratic energy and while eventually overtaken by the mullahs, led by the immensely charismatic Ayatollah Khomenei, the Islamic revolution promised to many of its detractors, including many Communists whom it initially brutally suppressed, that while Islamic, this indeed would be a democratic Republic. Elections, while not free according to our standards, were at least seen as expressions of popular will. No more. In what has become a profound seismic shock to the leadership of the Supreme leader, the people of Iran (at least a significant number of them) have challenged his interpretation of the election result. This in turn has shook the foundations of the mullahs' promise to the Iranians that the Islamic state would be a republic. If this promise is now seen as a sham, or a betrayal, then the whole consensus of the state has to be re-worked.

What we are seeing in the streets of Tehran is the unraveling of the consensus established not only by the Iranian Revolution of the 1979, but the brutal Iraq-Iran war of the early 1980s, about what Iran should look like as a state. Thus, the protesters' demands are no longer about the annulment of the election, but about the authority of the Supreme Leader and his Grand Council.

b) The other piece of evidence of a Revolution in the making is the broad support the Moussavi people seem to be enjoying. While initially a mostly urban, student-based movement, the enemies of Ahmedinejad seem to have grown in numbers and include many middle-class, lower middle-class people, including many housewives. The presence of thousands of conservatively dressed (in black hijab) middle-aged women on the streets of Tehran, with some of them goading the men to fight the police, is a truly remarkable development. The broad support for the Moussavi wing of the Iranian political elite is shown also by what it seems to be a growing rift within the cleric wing. Last night's arrest of Rafsanjani's--the richest and one of the most powerful men in Iran--relatives, who had been playing a prominent role in the background of the protests, shows the extent to which the Iranian clerical elite is divided.

2) Now to my second argument that the Revolution has something to do with Obama. While it is indisputable that the Revolution has more to do with the internal dynamics of the Iranian society (the disappointment with the policies of Ahmedinejad, crumbling economy, staggering unemployment, the proliferation of educated women demanding more freedoms, etc) it is also indisputable that most of these protesters are Internet-savy people who have, like the rest of us, been glued to the screens in following the election of Barack Obama. Obama's post-election statements, his speech to the Iranian people, and his more recent Cairo speech seems to have also split the Iranian political elite as to how to respond to Obama's message. Should they "unclench their fist," to use the parlance of the Obama administration, or should they follow the example of Ahmedinejad and keep "death to America" facade alive. The global reach of technology and the liberalization of the Iranian youth (who compose the majority of the Iranian society by the way) seems to have given the momentum to those like Moussavi who want to seize the opportunity and talk to Obama and the US. A sign of this is the fact that many protesters wave English-language symbols to theirs friends' Iphones which they later submit to the CNN newsroom.

What we are witnessing is truly historic, but as Thomas Friedman said in his op-ed this morning "we should have no illusions about the bullets and barrels they are up against."

Shame on the Serbian Government!

2009-06-10T21:24:00.001-07:00

The popular Bosnian investigative show "60 Minutes" aired an extraordinary episode tonight moving from its usual slot on Mondays, in order to air the breaking images of the war criminal General Ratko Mladic who has been on the run from the Indictment for Genocide, issued by the War Trimes Cribunal in the Hague since 1995.

These highly disturbing videos show the banality of evil: the man accused of murdering in cold blood 8000 young boys and men in Srebrenica, shelling Sarajevo on a daily basis and murdering over 10,000 civilians during the siege, and orchestrating the biggest campaign of murder in Europe since the Holocaust, smiling, attending his son's wedding, singing Serbian songs. What is particularly remarkable is the extent to which these clips show the criminality of every Serbian government since Milosevic who has claimed that they did not know where Mladic was. If you have the stomach to watch this murderer, you will see that he is moving in open sight and is guarded by the Serbian and Bosnian Serb army (and sometimes is not guarded at all!), as it had been reported all along.

Now, Serbian President Boris Tadic is to be commended for his bravery in arresting Mladic's political henchmen the lunatic poet Radovan Karadzic: as a result, President Tadic has been surrounded by heavy security including a professional sniper squad due to threats against his life. His predecessor Zoran Djindjic had extradited Milosevic and paid with his life. I am glad that President Tadic is taking more precautions.

But this is still not enough. The crimes of Milosevic's Serbia are simply too grave to be ignored and Mladic has to be arrested immediately. Please join me in emailing the Serbian government to arrest Mladic immediately. The videos shown by the brilliant "60 Minutes" team ensure that the Serbian government, under any administration, can no longer prolong its legal--international and national--as well as moral responsibility to arrest this butcher and extradite him to the cells of the Hague.

The email of President Tadic's Secretary is: jzivanovic@predsednik.rs

It is also not coincidental that these clips were aired at the time the EU is mulling whether or not to allow Serbian citizens to enter Europe without visas. I am an enthusiastic supporter of open borders and bear no grudge against any individual Serbian citizen, but still believe it would be a crime if the EU accelerated Serbia's application for the EU membership, ahead of Bosnia's, while Mladic was still at large under the noses of the very government that is claiming to belong to the club of the EU.

With this in mind please email the EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, urging him to pressure the Serbian government to arrest General Ratko Mladic now that we all know where he is.

Until this happens, Serbia should not be allowed to join the EU or even begin the membership process.

An Insider to Islamic Reformation

2009-06-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

President Obama's speech in Cairo cannot be deemed historic based on his frank criticism of all sides--the West, Israel, and the Arab world at large--as much for Obama's ability to insert himself, quite shrewdly, into a brewing war within the Islamic world, the war that the scholar of Islam Reza Aslan has likened to Islam's Reformation.

In his wonderfully articulate book "No God but God," Aslan argues that the rise of political Islam--and its most radical branch, the Wahabbism--rode the tailwind of the post-colonial movements in the Muslim world. The messages of the extreme wing of political Islam--the unconditional and irrational hatred of the West, rabid anti-Semitism, and an apocalyptic political platform--are directed not so much towards the West, but towards the Islamic world at large, Aslan insists. Thus, the burning towers of the World Trade Center and the gaping hole in the Pentagon building were the ultimate symbols of the Orthodox fundamentalism which seemed to say, again not to the West, but to its fellow Muslims: "See, we are winning, and God is on our side."

The brilliance of Obama is that he understands the intricacies of this internal fight within Islam and is not only not afraid, but relishes, straying into this political and literal minefield. In particular, Obama's ability to insert his own biography as a child of mixed marriage, of two worlds gives him the credibility to not only speak to the Muslims, but be an integral part of the Islamic Reformation! It doesn't really matter that he is a professed Christian as most Muslims seem him as essentially Muslim. In this regard they are not that different from the right-wingers in this country who see our President the same way the only difference being that this perception on the part of the Islamic world is tremendously positive.

Specifically, the most resonant part of his speech was his narration of his biography, his Muslim ancestry, and his memory trip to his childhood in Indonesia when he would wake up to the sounds of ezan. A particularly shrewd move on his part was to pepper his speech with eloquent verses from the Qur'an and his impeccable use of Arabic terms to denote uniquely Arabic experiences (the the hijab, zekat, etc. Criticizing Israel was a sideshow, albeit a significant one, but not necessarily historic. President Barack Husein Obama speaking to the Muslim world, not from the outside, but from the nooks and crannies of that world's own metaphors, dreams, images, and visions, was truly historic and seismic.

The Cairo speech will thus become a part of history for it has certainly tipped the balance in favor of the Reformation within Islam. With a few of those words, President Obama has lifted up women like Wedad Lootah, a 46 year old woman author from the United Arab Emirates who has written a wonderful little sex manual titled "Top Secret: Sexual Guidance for Married Couples," in which she offers frank advice to women (even guiding them through the ways to discover the ultimate pleasure in life, orgasm!), and informing the Arab men that while anal sex might have been their first sexual experience, due to the Arab world's intense gender segregation, that this should not be the expectation they have of their wives. What is interesting about this remarkable woman is that she wears the burqa and has never revealed her face and uses, get this, the Qur'an(!) to explain her views on sexuality. Needless to say, her work has prompted a fierce reaction from the sexually repressed Wahabbis, although it has achieved the bestseller status among many women. A 52 year old woman, with grandchildren, reported that she finally discovered orgasm: "Imagine, all that time she did not know," Lootah commented matter-of-factly.

President Obama's boost to the Reformation will certainly benefit the hundreds of thousands of Shari'a scholars who have been openly calling for the re-opening of the "gates of ijtihad, or the Shari'a consensus. The Shari'a law, and its all four mainstream schools of thought, is based on the consensus among scholars and jurists that was reached as early as 10th century after which the gates closed. Consequently, there can be no reopening of discussion on how Islam should view things such as homosexuality, adultery, theft, and gender relations. Some of the world's leading Shari'a jurists have been arguing, quite convincingly, that due to the modernity draped face of our world today, the ijtihad had been outlived, the gates have to be re-opened, and a more fluid, flexible, and pragmatic ijtihad established.

Finally, in not using the word "terrorism," or "good vs. evil," a single time, President Obama struck another deadly blow to Wahhabism: refusing to take up their apocalyptic language, he rooted them out of the debate, if only temporarily.

Let us remember that in getting to the point where it is now, modern Europe had to go through the horrors of Thirty Years' War, the Hugenot persecutions, and the brutal Vatican-inspired Crusades with the end result of making religion more meaningful and tolerable.

The Islamic world is engaged in this struggle at the very moment. And the fact that President Obama not only understands this, but can be an insider to this conversation (taking all of us with him), is simply remarkable!

Email to Bill O'Reilly

2009-06-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Bill,

Well you finally did it. With your cruel incitement to violence against Dr. George Tiller, now a victim of a gruesome act of domestic terrorism, you finally might have blown up your career into bits and pieces.

You are right when you say that people have the right to speak their mind without fear of reprisals, but what you forgot to mention is that public figures like yourself also have an ethical responsibility to think through the ways in which their words might impact the likes of Mr. Scott Roeder.

Until your corporate bosses decide to let you go--or you resign effective immediately--Fox News will be the one forgotten dial on our remote controls and we will be asking our favorite local bar owners to avoid turning the channel on.

A concerned American
Fedja

Sonia Sotomayor: An Echo of Obama's America

2009-05-29T08:05:00.000-07:00

What is left of the Republican Party has come out swinging against President Barack Obama's pick to the Supreme Court, a judge on the Second Circuit Appeals Court Sonia Sotomayor, a woman who symbolizes Obama's vision of America, his character, and reminds me why I became so fascinated with this man and voted so enthusiastically for him.

A child of Puerto Rican immigrants whose father died when she was 9, only a year after she was diagnosed with diabetes, grew up in the Bronx projects and went on to graduate summa cum laude from Ivy League Schools entering into the creme of the crop of the country's jurists, Sotomayor echoes the American dream of the post-WWII era: her parents moved to the US in order to participate in the emergence of the United States as an economic superpower. Sonia does not represent the American Dream ONLY because of the things she did, but MOSTLY because of the things she was ABLE to do in this country. Anywhere else on this planet, as a child of immigrants, living in a poor neighborhood, a single parent-home, she would have been faced with so many barriers that she would have not have been able to become a fully integrated national citizen. In America she did. This is not to say that most individuals who face adverse circumstance in this country make it. On the contrary, most do not and not because of some genetic flaws but because economic and the consequent social adversity is almost impossible to overcome. But, her life does mean that at least some, even if only a few, do make it in this country precisely because of what this country means to them. And in this respect, Sonia Sotomayor is a shining beacon of the American dream.

From the moment I read her short bio as she emerged as one of the finalists, some weeks before Obama finally picked her, I was convinced it would be her. Anyone who has read "Dreams from My Father," or even the "The Audacity of Hope," or listened to Obama's marvelous speech on race in Philadelphia would have been able to make the same prediction. Obama's genius lies not in some Messiah gene, but in his uncanny ability not so much to read the mood of the country as to shape this mood. How does he shape it? By cleverly rummaging through the disparate narratives that make up this country--slavery, immigration, racism--and picking out not only those that suit his background, but ALL of the strands, tying them together, and presenting the unified quilt of THE American narrative to the American people. This is why he picked Sonia Sotomayor. It has nothing to do with her specific Supreme Court credentials and has everything to do with Obama's vision of America. And it is for this reason, I am still an enthusiastic supporter of this man.

In nominating her to the Supreme Court, Obama has also brilliantly exposed the intellectual exhaustion, xenophobia and plain stupidity of the far-right in this country which is what is left of the GOP. Their character assassinations of Sotomayor show just how out of touch they are with the self-perception of America in the year 2009.

First: the GOP has a static vision of America that is stuck somewhere between mid-late 19th century. Their claim that Sotomayor's "empathy" is detrimental to her ability to make "objective" decisions would be funny if it were uttered by a five-year old, but is otherwise tragic since it is uttered by adult men (and few women) in suits. There is no such thing as "objective" decision. Our Constitution is not the Shari'a, or God's revelation, but man-made law that is necessarily continuously re-interpreted to suit the changing demographics and mood of the country. If it were up to the likes of Mitch McConnell and Rush Limbaugh we would still be interpreting "all men are created equal" to mean that blacks and women are not human beings.

Second criticism from the far-right has been that she will be a policy maker. Newsflash: judges are policy makers. As a judge on an appeals court, Sotomayor was necessarily a policy maker. If the Republicans bothered to learn how the law actually worked in reality (and not their wacko minds), they would realize that an appeals judge rules on specific cases and thus elaborates a previously general law into the minutiae of everyday life, and in doing so, every judge will necessarily tap into their previous experience and yes (gasp) emotion to make a judgment. The judges deciding Brown Vs. Board of Education did not use a footnote in a law ruling but their common sense to declare that black kids are as human as the rest of us.

Finally, the third and the most upsetting criticism has been that she is simultaneously, a racist and a man-hater. As evidence, the nutjobs who belong in a mental institution and not Wolf Blitzer's "Situation Room" (although sometimes I honestly cannot tell the difference between the two) claim that because she has emphasized her Latina identity and has served for Latina advocacy groups that she is a racist. The same goes for her gender identity. This criticism again would be funny if it did not echo the tragic intellectual depravity of the so-called Republican opposition. If these children in suits would bother to read a single book on racial and gender identity they would quickly realize that when a minority racial group claims its identity that is not the same thing as whites claiming their own race. This is simply because in a formerly "white" country where non-whites were considered less than human, it was non-whiteness that had been marked for centuries and whiteness had been seen as normal! The same goes for gender identity. Thus, nobody questioned Samuel Alito or Roberts about how their "whitness" might impact their rulings. Precisely, because whiteness is tragically still seen as the standard of racial normativity. In terms of gender identity, I know that Republicans are terrified of intelligent women (lest they confirm their own intellectual cowardice and ineptitude), but at least they should not be honest about it if they ever want to be anywhere near the corridors of power in this country.

In conclusion, the shrillness, the stupidity, and the plain meanness of the far-right attacks on Obama's vision of America--echoed by Sonia Sotomayor's life story--almost guarantee that the Republicans will remain in wilderness for some time and when they finally re-emerge they will necessarily have to be a better party. And we will all be better for it.

"Prolonged detention" is un-American

2009-05-23T09:04:00.000-07:00

President Obama has really been impressive in reversing some major Bush-era blunders of this country's approach to fighting the scourge of terrorism: his insistent commitment to close down the Gitmo concentration camp, his ban of torture and the re-institution of the Army Field Manual in guiding interrogation methods, and his genuine desire to bring back the rule of law to the US' fight against terrorism. He has consistently tried, often bending over backwards, to resolve the mess inherited from the Bush-Cheney regime. But while I do not doubt that he is a genuinely decent, thoughtful, and honest man, I do think President Obama has disappointed many of his hardcore supporters, such as myself, in completely reversing the Bush course. I have written about his intention to revive the illegal military tribunals. His proposal for the so-called "prolonged detentions," however, represents the most gut-wrenching disappointment.

President Obama vowed during his campaign to revive the rule of law that had been so mercilessly stamped upon by the Bush-Cheney regime. Now he is arguing that at Gitmo there are about 100 prisoners who are so dangerous that they could never be released, but also cannot be tried. Why? How is it that we know that they are dangerous if that cannot be proved in a court of law? Obama has never made this case persuasively and has instead, asked us to trust the government when it tells us that these people are dangerous. The main difference between a democracy and a totalitarian regime is the fact that in a democracy people do not blindly trust the government's arguments--particularly in incarcerating people--but that the government has to PROVE its case. This is why we have the court of law. In a totalitarian regime, the people are either terrified to question the government's motives or are blinded by the leader's charisma and the national security interests to question these motives. As a result, many innocent people inevitably end up on the receiving end of these policies. What guarantees can President Obama give us that his successor(s) will not apply/extend the policy of "prolonged detention" to US citizens? What if a few years from now, a different group of people--say, Bosnians--become isolated as a security threat. I am screwed! While this hypothetical case might seem ridiculous to us now who would have thought ten years ago that our President would be arguing that he had the right to incarcerate people indefinitely on the basis of some secret evidence that he/she cannot reveal to the US citizens?! This after the previous administration authorized torture in order to sell an unpopular war to the American public!

If we are indeed holding people who are dangerous to be released, the government has a constitutional duty to prove this! If so, put them in a max-security prison for the rest of their lives. If they cannot prove, you have to let them go. You can track them and make sure they do not pose a threat, but you cannot hold them indefinitely.

While I have complete confidence in this President and have no doubt that he would not misuse this power, I strongly object to him making the policy of "prolonged detention" the bedrock of American justice. It is actually a betrayal of the American ideal of justice.

Religion or prejudice

2009-05-17T06:29:00.000-07:00

Religions are political ideologies. They are based on historical myths, stories, messianic prophecies, and are supposed to provide blueprints for everyday behavior. This is why religion is as open to criticism and public debate just like any other ideology. Which brings me to the Notre Dame controversy.

The same Catholic bishops who are protesting President Obama's visit to the campus and the university's decision to honor him with a degree are the ones who did not say a word when the same school awarded President George W. Bush an honorary degree in 2001 despite the fact that Bush had signed over 140 death warrants while the governor of Texas. The same Catholic clergy did not say a word about withdrawing this honor from Bush after the information about torture camps, Gitmo, and illegal wars came to light. Why didn't they say anything? Because Catholic bishops use their robes to hide their deeply seated prejudices from the public eye. The cloak of religion is supposed to awe us into giving the Catholic Church immunity from exposing their silly and prejudiced beliefs to public scrutiny like we do with any other political institution/ideology.

In the case of abortion, the Catholic Church espouses the worst kind of misogyny--old gray-haired men (most of whom have never engaged in sex supposedly) deciding the fate of women's wombs. Their obsessive desire to control human behavior, and in particular, sexual behavior of women, should be condemned at every step of the way. Their quotations from the Bible in support of their prejudices should make us even more eager to confront their hate and call it what it truly is: superstition. The hypocrisy that the Catholic Church (just like every other institution of every other organized religion) has displayed with the hiding of pedophiles, turning the Pope into the biggest stock investor in Europe, to mention a few, is simply due to the fact that to repeat again, the Vatican is a political institution.

So these Catholic bishops cannot hide behind the cloak of religion and expect us all to cower in awe and not criticize their stupidity and resist their hate-mongering.

Obama is wrong again

2009-05-14T07:49:00.000-07:00

In a stunning reversal of his previous commitment to the rule of law and transparency President Obama announced that he would fight the Second Circuit court ruling to release some 2000 Pentagon-owned photos showing prisoner abuse by our troops. In justifying his decision, President Obama said that the airing of these photos would endanger our troops in combat zones and further aflame the anti-American opinion in the Arab world. This argument makes absolutely no sense.

First, the Arab world has already seen the kind of torture the Bush administration approved at the highest levels: Abu Ghraib, Guntanamo, CIA dark sites. All of this is old news. What has been the refreshing piece of good "new" news was Obama's promise to uphold American values and the rule of law. The beginning has been promising: the order ending torture, closing Guantanamo, publishing torture memos, leaving the door open to prosecutions of Bush officials who approved tortured, etc. Obama has done more for the safety of our troops and our image in the world in his first 100 days than both Clinton and Bush had done during their two terms. This is why his reversal of this policy is so disappointing.

Given the fact that the world already knows these photos are pretty bad covering them up only makes things worse and makes a mockery of our rule of law. As Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington university said, it is not up to the President to release or not release the photos. This is a court order, issued in a response to the ACLU lawsuit under the freedom of information act, telling the Pentagon that it HAS to release the photos. In its ruling, the 2nd Circuit court answered the very argument that President Obama uses now to block the release of these photographs: the public interest in seeing these photos and airing the past crimes outweighs the vague notions of inflaming anti-US opinion. In other words, it is Bush administration's policies that have ALREADY made our troops less safe and not Obama's intention to reverse these policies. Keeping the photos secret only prolongs the cancerous growth around our image and it is the secrecy that continues to inflame the anti-American sentiment.

What is particularly important about these photos--and I suspect is the main reason Obama reversed his decision--is the fact that 2000 of these images show that rather than being the result of a "few bad apples," the torture and abuse of detainees in Iraq was a widespread POLICY among the soldiers directly authorized and inspired by those torture memos drafted at the highest levels of the US government. So not releasing these photos is also a disservice to our men and women in uniform, most of whom are honorable and courageous individuals who have dedicated their lives to this country. The photos would put to rest once and for all the argument--cynically put forward by Cheney and Bush--that it was a few deranged soldiers who committed these abuses. No, it was Bush's abrogation of our commitment to the Geneva Conventions and the subsequent drafting of torture memos by Bush lawyers that led to this type of behavior. According to anonymous sources, the photos show many of the very same techniques that Yoo, Bybee, and Bradbury approved at the Office of Legal Counsel.

I still think that the Obama administration will lose this case because the argument they are using is so flimsy and has already been rejected by a court. I also think this is a very politically clever ploy of Obama to make it seem like it was forced to release the photos: in other words, they might be expecting to lose the case but then they have political cover against the backlash.

But in the process of this political game, Obama is hurting the rule of law by making the argument that the government can block the Freedom of Information process from taking place simply because the information released might embarrass the government. That's the whole point! The Freedom of Information Act is an invaluable tool the public has to air our government's policies and shame the government into respecting the rule of law in case law has been violated. And in the case of the Bush administration, the law had been not only violated, but our very Constitution was defecated upon repeatedly.

Democrats' complicity in a war crime

2009-05-09T09:26:00.000-07:00

In their forceful (and admittingly, successful) campaign to block any torture investigations, the Republicans have made their point: some of the leading Democrats were implicated in Bush's torture policies. They released outlines of CIA briefings of top Democrats on the intelligence committee, including the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in which it becomes fairly clear that she--along with other Democrats (Rockefeller of W. Virginia and Harman of California)--was told that CIA would use waterboarding. The fact that the briefing took place in September, while Abu Zubaydah had been water boarded in August, shows that the Bush administration did not care one bit about following the law or informing the other branches of the government BEFORE committing this war crime. But the brief also shows that Pelosi said nothing--not a word!--about these techniques. Her explanation really insults the intelligence of the average American: "we were told that these techniques could be used and not that they were going to be used or that they had been used"!!! Even if this was the case--which I highly doubt--Pelosi should have raised objections to this and threatened to go public if this continued. Yes, this would be a great political risk, but what good is power if you do not utilize it for the common good.

And Pelosi, as well as most of the Democratic mainstream establishment, (with the fine exception of Russ Feingold of Wisconsin among others), went along with everything that Bush wanted them to go along with. Arguably, it is this complicity that allowed Bush to plunge our country into the abyss of war crimes, deep recession, and to tarnish our image abroad. Pelosi should come clean to the American people about her role, her knowledge, of torture techniques, or otherwise, resign!

Now it becomes clear to me why the Democratic establishment is using "let's be united" baby talk to obstruct the course of justice in holding those who tortured accountable. As one of my favorite constitutional scholars Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University, has consistently and passionately argued, a criminal investigation of torture is not A CHOICE, but a CONSTITUTIONAL OBLIGATION of our government. The investigation should hold everyone involved accountable: whether they are Democrat, Republican, or Marsian for that matter. The future of our democracy and our rule of law is truly at stake in this case.

The Times report about the Pelosi role in all of this is even more worrying in the light of the leak from the Justice Department that Holder might not appoint a special prosecutor instead, referring the case of the lawyers who drafted the torture memos to the American Bar Association, for possible disbarrement. As Professor Turley has argued, the Bar Association has no authority to investigate fully their criminal enterprise, only to the extent to which it affected their professional conduct and the worst punishment it can mete out is to disbar them.

Yes, disbarment for a war crime, that is certainly the penalty that fits the crime! If this proves to be the outcome, then the international community, the Hague Tribunal, and the United States should apologize to Serbia for holding their former President in the prison for war crimes when they could have just disbarred him, instead of letting him die in prison.

Obama and the rule of law

2009-05-02T08:21:00.000-07:00

There is a growing concern among those of us who believe in the rule of law that Obama will retreat on the central promise of his campaign to restore the rule of law in trying the Gitmo detainees. The NYT is reporting this morning that the administration is increasingly leaning towards keeping the military commission system that Bush had set up and that Obama criticized harshly during his campaign. Anonymous sources within the administration say that the reason why they might keep the commissions is because our federal court system would make it difficult for the government to convict?

Obama is kidding right? What kind of an argument is this? The government thinks the cards are stacked up against it in the court of law, so it will create its own more favorable law universe? This is completely unacceptable! The federal court system IS our rule of law and the government has no legal authority to shortcut the law in order to win a case. I mean, this is what the rule of law is all about!

The administration's increasing disenchantment with the idea of the federal courts trying the Gitmo suspects is due to two main reasons: 1) federal judges do not allow evidence obtained under torture; and 2) hearsay evidence is not permitted. Both of these supposed weaknesses of our federal court system is what makes our rule of law uniform for all human beings no matter what crimes they are accused of! So, if we tortured the suspects in order to obtain "evidence" from them, we committed a war crime and if we do lose the case, then we lose the case. The consequent release of the suspects would be the result NOT of the supposed weakness of our courts, but to our own crimes! Secondly, when it comes to hearsay: this only shows the weakness of our government's case against many of these detainees. Keep in mind that according to a study done a few years back (and which I cited on this blog before) only 5% of Gitmo suspects had known Al-Q links and most of them were captured by Pakistani warlords in exchange for generous bounty our soldiers were offering. So, admitting hearsay evidence in this case is a total betrayal of the very ideal of the rule of law of which we boast so often.

Obama would be betraying his oath of office if he allowed these commissions to continue and would seriously undermine our claim to be the nation of laws. Military commissions should be disbanded, and all suspects tried in the court of law, not some made up "court of law," but our federal court system.

The government has NO CHOICE but to follow the law come what may!

Arlen Specter abandons GOP

2009-04-29T07:20:00.000-07:00

The defection of Arlen Specter from the increasingly schizophrenic GOP is truly good news for the future of this country. With his presence in the Democratic Senate caucus, and the inevitable addition of Al Franken to the Minnesota seat, the Democrats will have the filibuster-proof 60 seats in the Senate. While this doesn't mean that Specter will always vote with the Democrats it does mean that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for the Republicans to block Obama's agenda. This is crucial because it is also the time when Obama is pushing through the Congress two major initiatives of his presidency and the Democratic party's agenda in general: health care reform, and an energy bill. Both of these bills are essential to the fulfillment of Obama's campaign promise to provide affordable health care to all Americans and weaken our dependence on foreign oil while at the same time crafting a sound environmentally-friendly energy policy. Obama's rock-star popularity even in the heartland of the country, the increasing signs of the economy's stabilization (or at least moderate thawing), and the filibuster-proof of Senate majority for the Dems means that Obama will get his way on almost all of his agenda items. And this is good news for all of us, even the Republicans who will benefit from getting more affordable health care and breathing less polluted air.

At the same time, GOP's response to Specter's defection shows the depth of their insanity and points to the probability that the Republicans are going to stay in the crazy wilderness for election cycles to come. The GOP commander in chief, Rush Limbaugh said "good riddance" to Specter and told him to take McCain and his daughter with him. The GOP nominal chairman Michale Steele said that Specter was doing this for self-preservation and that somehow his defection was inevitable due to Specter's "left voting record." And finally, this morning in his WashP op-ed Bill Kristol (the venerable ideological "brain" behind the GOP and who has been wrong on every single issue!) said that this is good for the Republican party!

What this collective response shows is the GOP's continuing belief in some imagined "purity" of the party's ideology. Reacting to any challenge to their right-wing narrow-mindedness with aggressiveness that reminds one of middle-school gym locker fights (even if the challenge comes from McCain's daughter), the Republican ideologues have really resigned themselves to being the far right-wing party of the South. Their argument that Specter is doing this for survival is so blatantly shallow that it really merits now comment, but I can't help it: of course he is doing this for self-preservation! He was facing an impossible Republican primary challenge in Pennsylvania and running on that ticket against a Club for Growth far-right winger (a man who I think truly needs medical attention) would have been insane and politically stupid. Specter has always been treated like an outcast by the Republicans especially with the recent descent of the GOP into the far right-wing nuttery. After all, Specter entered politics as a Democrat and switched to the GOP in order to win a District Attorney seat on a Republican ticket. But this is what politics is all about! And instead of figuring out how to reshape their party's platform in order to keep people like Spector and draw millions of Americans to their party tent, the GOP reacted with such stupid, shallow aggressiveness that it really makes one concerned for the future of our two-party democracy.

The resigned criticism of Specter also shows that the Republicans have lost their mind if they think they can win on their ideology alone: this country's demography necessitates that the party in power support: gay rights, abortion rights, more activist government, and less belligerent foreign policy.

For their part, the GOP operatives keep railing against Obama's "socialism" (or fascism, depending which side of his bed Glen Beck got up that morning), roaming the dense inhospitable jungle of their wilderness increasingly resembling rabid dogs and not mature political opposition!

I really don't mind them staying in the wilderness for as long as it is humanly possible, but I do worry about the Democrats having unchecked power. Not because of their agenda: in fact, this is one reason we all should be happy right now, in fact thrilled! The Democratic agenda is good for this country and we should make no secret that we want it. But what I worry about is Democrats' lately dormant but inevitable propensity for infighting and the possibility of several camps being established within the Democratic caucus in both houses. The simmering fight over investigations of Bush's torture policies might present the first opportunity for the Democrats to start dividing. But even these divisions (if they are over substantive policy differences) might be good for this country because they fill the never satisfied need of this country for a true multiparty system.

Grading Obama at 100 days

2009-04-28T05:28:00.000-07:00

Let me also jump on the 100 days bandwagon even though the White House has called this a "Hallmark holiday," they themselves seem to be readying for it with a prime time news conference scheduled for Wednesday night preceded by a town-hall meeting with the President in St. Louis. The 100 days mark also matters because it allows us to gauge what kind of President Obama promises to be. This is how I would grade him--you are welcome to chime in.

Economy: A-
In the first 100 days he has passed the biggest stimulus bill in the American history and the stimulus is already having affects. Just yesterday, the NYT reported that the people in the small economically depressed Indiana town Anderson are feeling more optimistic about the overall economy, and the city's mayor can begin many reconstruction projects. Our own university budget is not being rescinded 3% (a standard operating procedure during the disastrous Blago tenure), but it is actually being increased 1%. The reason I would give him a - is because the stimulus was stripped of considerable punch by the so-called "moderate Republicans," and the President necessarily had to go along with this. At the same time, however, the plan to fix the housing market seems to be working: the home sales are up, the cost of refinancing mortgages is at its historic low and has triggered a flood of refinancing and seems to have slowed the rate of foreclosures. Further, Giethner's long-criticized plan to save the banking system also seems to be working: Wells Fargo posted its best profit last month and many banks seem to be doing much better. The rallying of the Wall Street in the past few weeks suggest that we at long last may have reached the bottom of the recession.

Foreign Policy: B
Obama has drastically shifted gears from the horrors of the previous administration. He has followed through on his campaign promise to do more listening than talking in the world, to talk to our enemies, and to be more respectful of other points of view. Our relationship with both Cuba and Venezuela seems to be thawing: there are major discussions in the works between the US and Cuba and Hugo Chavez is going to send the Venezuelan ambassador to the US. Obama's popularity in the world, particularly in Europe, has done wonders for our relations. His performance on the world stage has been superb. However, I am very worried about his decision to escalate the fighting in Afghanistan: it seems that Afghanistan is becoming his Iraq and I just can't see what good can come out of it. At the same time, Iraq is almost destined to spiral down into violence once we leave: already the violence is ratcheting up as Maliki is becoming increasingly sectarian, provoking a reaction from the disaffected Sunni exiles who are funding the insurgency. In short, the Iraq quagmire remains just that: a horrible quagmire out of which I see no exit.

Changing America's image in the world: A+
I really think Obama has done a superb job on changing the image of our country in the world. On the second day in office, Obama banned all "enhanced interrogation" techniques (read: torture) that the Bush administration had used with impunity; he has ordered the closing of Guantanamo, and has re-instituted the rule of the Geneva Conventions in our treatment of detainees. His performance on the world stage (as I said above) has been nothing short of superb and he has followed through on every single campaign promise in terms of changing America's image in the world.

Restoring the Constitution: C
I am afraid this is where he gets lowest marks from me. While he did change the direction of our country, Obama has also been lukewarm at best and politically cowardly at worst in reversing the serious damage the Bush administration had done to our Constitution. In particular, he has been very disappointing with restoring the habeaus corpus to detainees, arguing that those at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan do not have the right to due process that our Constitution guarantees. Further, his continuing defense of the wiretapping program that he voted for while a candidate is really worrisome. He needs to completely restore the habeus corpus to everyone and outlaw warantless wiretapping. Finally, probably the most worrisome thing about his restoration of the Constitution has been his lukewarm support for holding the torturers-in-chief accountable for their grave violations of our laws. His support for a "bipartisan Commission" is a transparent political ploy to push the issue out of the White House. He needs to step back and allow Eric Holder of the Justice Dept to appoint a Special Prosecutor who will investigate these potential war crimes. Obama's mantra that he is interested in "looking forward, not looking backward" drives me nuts because it doesn't mean anything! Looking forward is impossible without looking backward because it would mean that the words in our laws and our Constitution mean nothing and can be violated at will.

Restoring America's confidence: A+
This is another area where he gets the highest marks. The polls show the country is generally optimistic about the direction we are taking (compared to only 28% who thought we were going in the right direction during the last thralls of the Bush regime). Obama's approval rating stands at the historic high of 69%, which is higher than Reagan's at this time, and all of his predecessors, with the exception of Eisenhower. This morning the NYT also reported that Obama is changing the perception of race relations in this country with more than half seeing the conditions of race relations improved and the number of black Americans who think so has nearly doubled since July! The mood of the country is extremely important not just for our economy, but for the very soul of our country. What is particularly a positive development of Obama's young presidency is the shift in the public perception of the role of government in our lives. People increasingly view the government as the solution and not as the problem (as Reagan idiotically claimed!). Obama's budget priorities coupled with the stimulus are making the government cool again. This might give Obama the necessary public support to push through the long overdue health care reform and move the country to the left.

So for the most part, Obama has kept his campaign promises. His personal favoribility ratings are also at a historic high: 74% and Michelle Obama's are 85%! The image of the first family in the White House has also done wonders for America's image in the world.

Ali Soufan: The American hero

2009-04-26T16:00:00.001-07:00

As the fallout from the torture revelations continues, there are several officials of the US government who emerge as true heroes who resisted the impulse of the moment to engage in brutal tactics, and instead, passionately defended American values. The star of these brave souls is the former FBI agent Ali Soufan who, seven years after, is speaking out in this Newsweek article. Ali Soufan was a veteran FBI interrogator and a student of John O'Neill, the famous FBI agent who had warned about Bin Laden and was ignored of course. A son of Beirut immigrants who moved to Philadelphia as a child, he was eventually recruited into the FBI anti-terrorism unit and spoke fluent Arabic. His knowledge of the Kur'an was legendary according to his former colleagues: during interrogations he would cite Kuranic verses, and argue with terrorists about the meaning of certain passages, the legacy of Muhammad, etc. Eventually, he would gain their trust and information would start pouring out. He was a lead investigator of the USS Cole bombing.

In the spring of 2002, Ali Soufan was thrown in the middle of the brewing conflict between the CIA and the FBI over the methods for interrogating terrorism suspects. The subject of contention this time was Abu Zubaydah a fiery and borderline szchizophrenic Palestinian who was seen as a chief logistics chief of Al-Q. He was badly wounded in a firefight in Pakistan and was transferred to US custody by the Pakistanis, and was taken to an unknown location (probably Thailand). He was turned over to Ali Soufan and his fellow FBI interrogator. Together, they nursed the terrorist's wounds: Soufan held ice to his bruised lips, and his colleague nursed his buttocks! Eventually Abu Zubaydah opened up and started telling them valuable information. In the meantime, Soufan had poured through his FBI file and started addressing him by the nickname that his mother had used for him, shocking Abu Zubaydah into talking! In fact, they even started arguing about US influence, and globalism, after which Abu Zubaydah asked for a Coca-Cola a request which had them both laughing. In any case, Abu Zubaydah soon identified Khalid Sheikh Muhammad as one of the plotters of 9/11 and told them in detail valuable information about terrorists training camps.

However, the FBI agents were soon interrupted by CIA contractors, led by James Mitchell who became the architect of the interrogation program. Soufan became alarmed when he saw a coffin-like box outside of Zubaydah's cell, saw him naked, and even heard Mitchell talk about waterboarding him. Furious, he phoned his headquarters and soon the FBI director Muller became involved. After CIA interrogators repelled Soufan's advice that this was illegal (arguing that they had Gonzales' authorization), Soufan threatened to arrest them! At which, he was told by his headquarters to leave CIA premises, and Muller ordered his agents to stay clear of the CIA.

Ironically, the whole episode re-opened the deeply entrenched rift between the FBI and the CIA regarding anti-terrorism struggle with the latter seeing FBI as weak and too patient with terrorists. As the 9/11 Commission report pointed out, it was the FBI-CIA rivalry that had caused serious missteps in the prelude to 9/11. And now, the rift was greater than ever before.

Ali Soufan must be feeling pretty good about himself right now as does the FBI director Muller. As they all should. These are the true American heroes.

Conspiracy established

2009-04-24T16:29:00.000-07:00

The flood of information on Bush administration's torture policies has clearly established a well-organized conspiracy that will definitely hold up in the court of law. It all started when President Bush signed the Executive Order of Feb 7, 2002 ordering the suspension of the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions in our treatment of detainees. This triggered a chain-reaction of flurry of legal activities within the Office of the Legal Counsel of the Justice Department, the Pentagon's legal counsel office, as well as Vice President's Legal Counsel David Addington. What is particularly important in this case is that it has been clearly established that those who drafted the torture memo KNEW they were violating the law at the time those memos were drafted.

The clear evidence of this is the fact that as early as December 2001, the Dept of Defense asked the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), which had devised the interrogation training of our own servicemen0--the similar methods were to be used against the detainees--to comment on these interrogation methods and if they were successful. Not only did the advice from the JPRA refer to these methods--including water-boarding--as "torture," but they were confused as to why the DoD wanted to use these interrogation methods to obtain intelligence in a fast manner. The whole point of these methods--initially used by North Koreans and the Chinese--was to extract FALSE information from our servicemen. This is why our PoWs were captured on camera saying that they believed in Communism, that the US was bad, etc. You know "The Manchurian Candidate" kind of staff. (The movie was actually inspired by these methods). So, for the administration to argue that they used these methods to gather information fast in order to prevent an attack is completely ridiculous. This is further confirmed by the memo of the former legal counsel to Condi Rice, Philip Zelikow who warned the administration that this would violate the US law and would be ineffective. Of course, both Zelikow's memo and the dissenting opinions of the JPRA were quashed, ignored, as the administration frantically proceeded to implement its torture policies. In fact, just a few days after a high-level visit to the GITMO by high officials of the Bush administration, GITMO started using the same methods. Once the war in Iraq started and Abu Ghraib became a US prison, the methods were employed there, as it was confirmed by the shocking photos we all saw in 2004.

So, why would the administration do this? It turns out that the torture of Abu Zubayda started when someone from the administration asked the CIA to probe him about Iraq-AlQ links. After the CIA interrogators said he did not know anything about such a link, they pushed the CIA to employ the tougher methods. Yes, the administration used torture for political purposes! In order to drum up the fake case for the war in Iraq!

This stuff is simply unbelievable. Attn General Eric Holder needs to appoint an independent and credible and respected Special Prosecutor, give him free reign, and allow him to follow the trail of evidence. What we have, from what we have learned in the last week or so, is a clear conspiracy to violate the law. This, in a nutshell, is a war crime.

I am increasingly confident the Obama administration will let its Justice Dept. do its constitutional duty.

Another Torture Bombshell

2009-04-21T18:18:00.001-07:00

If anyone had any doubt as to the absurdity of the Bush administration's argument supporting torture, they should read the article in today's Foreign Policy issue written by a former Bush official. The official in question is a man by the name of Philip Zelikow. He was appointed as Secretary of State's Condolezza Rice's counsel and was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission. But because he had a high security clearance he vowed to secrecy (even though he had seen the memos) and spoke out only today after the memos became public knowledge.

It turns out that Zelikow wrote an alternative memo at the time Gonzales and his clan were writing their torture memos. The memo offered an alternative view of their interpretation of the US and international law. In particular, Zelikow argued that their interpretation of "cruel, human and degrading" was not legally sound: and in fact, that those methods clearly violated Article 16 of the Convention against Torture, as well as the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. By the way, the violation of Common Article 3 is a federal offense, a war crime, punishable up to life imprisonment! In addition, this bureaucrat argued for moral standards to be evaluated before approving these methods. In other words, what was the unique value of the information we learned from the terrorists? And what did that do to us? In other words, the question is not who these terrorists are, but who we are, as Zelikow eloquently puts it. In addition, he pointed out that the memo ignored the 8th amendment, "conditions for confinement," by approving the confinement of prisoners in small boxes. Finally, he also suggested that the methods would be legal if they would not "shock the conscience" of the American people and if the federal courts could impose the same methods on the American citizens in American jails if national security was at stake. This obviously would never be possible! Hence, the methods are illegal under US law in the opinion of Mr. Zelikow.

Ok, but even this damning memo is not the end of the story. It is what the Bush cronies did with it! Not only did they ignore it, but they tried to destroy every single copy. This sounds much like obstruction of justice and tampering with crime scene! I mean, this stuff just keeps getting nastier and nastier.

In the end, I was really heartened by President Obama's statement today that it would not be up to him to decide if those who drafted the memos would be prosecuted. This is up to the Justice Department! Well said, Mr. President. You truly make us all proud!

Torture Investigation(s) Imminent

2009-04-21T05:41:00.000-07:00

There are some good news this morning on the possibility that many branches of our government might conduct special investigations of those who approved torture methods outlined in the memos President Obama released. Despite Obama's reluctance to prosecute even those who drafted the memos (John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury), Eric Holder's Justice Department leaked the news late last night that Mr. Holder is seriously considering appointing a special prosecutor to look into the ways in which these torture methods were authorized at the top. At the same time, the White House went back on Rahm Emmanuel's slip on "This Week" that no one should be prosecuted, retracting that wide-ranging blank check by saying that President's Chief of Staff meant to say that those who carried out orders would not be prosecuted and not those who ordered them. This was an obvious move to leave the door open to these prosecutions. Furthermore, there is a growing pressure in the Congress on the Justice Department to investigate: the Judiciary Committee and the Armed Service Committee are both conducting their own investigations. Finally, the pressure from the international community is building: UN's chief torture expert said yesterday that the US is obligated under the Convention Against Torture to investigate.

The fact that our Attorney General Holder (who is emerging to be my favorite guy in Obama's administration) is seriously considering this, despite Obama's objections, shows the level of independence this Justice Department has from the White House, contrary to what it looked like under the Bush regime. It is also interesting that today we hear of the terrible scandal implicating Rep. Jane Harman (D-California) in a complicated scheme, involving indicted Israeli lobbyists and Attorney General Roberto Gonzales. According to the still sketchy reports, Harman was inadvertently picked up by NSA's wiretapping program as she promised to the Israeli lobbyists to push for the FBI investigation of their espionage activities to be dropped in return for their help in getting the chair of the Intelligence committee. At the same time, Alberto Gonzales pressured his department to slow down the investigation in return for Harman's cooperation on the Bush administration's desire to keep the wiretapping program secret. I mean, this reads like a depressing spy novel! And it shows the level of incest between Bush's White House and their Justice Department. And finally, it shows the need for Obama's Justice Department to assert its independence and this would be the issue to do it with!

That an investigation seems imminent is confirmed by the increasingly panicked Dick Cheney who rushed to the Fox News Channel yesterday and hysterically argued that Obama revealed "our national secrets," of course ignoring the fact that all those memos had been revealed by the leaked International Red Cross report in the New York Review of Books, including day to day interrogations of the suspects. He also (falsely) argued that during those interrogations, we got some useful information that saved lives, again ignoring the testimonies of many CIA agents that by the time the torture started, the suspects had already told them everything they knew. Yesterday's NYT report that one of the suspects was waterboarded 183 times in a month (!!!) shows the ineffectiveness of the method. Leaked interviews with those CIA interrogators shows that even before the torture started they alerted their headquarters that the suspect had told them everything he knew but it was from the higher echelons of power that the orders for those methods came.

Which brings us to why Cheney seems so panicky these days. As he should be!

President Ahmedinejad: Shut up!

2009-04-20T11:14:00.001-07:00

The Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinejad just a few minutes ago confirmed the wisdom of Obama's decision not to attend the annual UN conference against racism. The Iranian leader began his speech by calling Israel "completely racist," and arguing that the European "settlers and emigrants" were allowed to flood Palestine after WWII. But he did not mention why they were allowed to settle there? Hmm, maybe because 6 million of them had just been murdered and gassed?! Ahmedinejad's rhetoric is not only "vile," as the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described it, but it is also extremely unhelpful to Obama.

President Obama has staked a lot of political capital on his calm, deliberative, respectful foreign policy and has truly opened up new channels of dialogue with the Iranian regime(s). Ahmedinejad has responded by repeating (for the hundredth fucking time!) the same old anti-Semitic mantra against Israel and listing (again for the hundredth time) all the sins of the US in the world. More substantively, the Iranian regime at large has responded by jailing a US citizen and journalist on the obviously drummed up charges of treason. And of course by continuing to enrich uranium.

I still believe that Obama's foreign policy will yield much better results, and already is yielding these results, than Bush's cowboy showmanship. In fact, Obama's reception at the South American conference, his chat with Hugo Chavez and his overtures to Cuba, have really opened up a new era of US' relations with the rest of the world. It is also true that the US had been inflicting damage on many other countries for decades, it will take more than a couple of nice words from a well-intentioned President, to change the image of the US. But, having said that, the rest of the world, especially countries like Iran, have to meet Obama at least halfway!

Repeating the same-old anti-Semitic delusions, which we thought had been forever discredited by the horror of the Holocaust, is beyond unhelpful. It is criminal! So, President Ahmedinejad: shut up! And get off the stage!

Obama is Wrong!

2009-04-17T05:44:00.000-07:00

Obama has to be commended for releasing the so-called "torture memos," that Bush's Justice Department officials wrote in the aftermath of 9/11 as a legal advice for CIA interrogators who were in the process of questioning "high-level" detainees at CIA's secret prisons abroad. The memos are truly disgusting. They make for a hair-raising reading and make one ashamed to be American! They confirm every single torture method previously reported by many courageous whistle blowers, Jane Mayer's book "The Dark Side," and most importantly, the 2006 secret report by the International Red Cross who had the chance to interview the 14 suspected terrorists who had been exposed to these methods.

The memos, written by the Office of the Legal Counsel, outline in bureaucratic and detached detail how far the CIA could go in interrogating the suspects. In short, the memos allowed: waterboarding, slamming prisoners against the wall, forced nudity for extended periods of time, dousing with cold war, slapping, stomach punching, putting a prisoner in a small box, placing insects inside the box, etc. If anyone had doubted that torture had been authorized by Bush himself, these memos leave no doubt that Bush and his Justice Department legally authorized torture, violating the International Convention Against Torture, the UN Charter of Human Rights, and several sections of the Geneva Conventions, the violations of which constitute a war crime.

So while Obama bravely declassified these memos--going against the strong push from the CIA and the intelligence community not to--he also issued a statement in which he closed the door to any prosecution of any CIA interrogators. The legal argument is as flimsy as it gets: they were following orders. As a constitutional lawyer Obama surely knows that this argument did not work for the Nazis at Nuremberg, or the Japanese who waterboarded our soldiers and whom we sentenced to death after WWII. I am by no means comparing CIA to Nazis, but merely pointing out that this attempt at legal immunity for lower-level violators has been historically discounted. The matter is further complicated by the fact that CIA has to rely (by law) on the opinion of the Office of the Legal Counsel. Otherwise, every CIA officer would have to hire his/her own lawyer and ask for advice before doing anything. This is why we have the Office of the Legal Counsel. But for too long this office has been staffed by administrations' cronies who issue opinions that are not legally sound, but rather, politically correct in that they are written with the interests of the administration in mind and not in the spirit of the law. According to the internal investigation of the Justice Department, John Yoo and Co. at Bush's office of legal counsel seriously violated ethics and wrote unsubstantiated memos based on flimsy legal arguments.

While Obama is partially right in saying that CIA interrogators followed what they thought were legal procedures, this statement also ignores the fact that there was seriously internal dissent regarding these methods. The FBI director, to whom I give a lot of credit for his courage, told his agents to walk out of the room and forbade them from participating in what he thought was a war crime. The Navy's counsel at Gitmo was appalled at the treatment of the prisoners there and soon resigned. And the list goes on. The Red Cross was issuing warnings and the CIA kept up with the interrogations as late as 2005. So the argument that they were doing this in the frantic days after 9/11 does not hold water at all. Even if it did, why do we need laws if they are going to collapse like a house of cards every time we have a national crisis?

What is most disturbing about Obama's blank-check immunity to CIA interrogators is the fact that this statement closed the door to any future prosecutions of the lawyers who wrote the memo. I would be fine with Obama not prosecuting lower level officials if he had committed to prosecute those who legalized torture, and go up the chain of command. But his emphasis on looking to the future and not going back to the past seriously dampers hope that anyone will ever be held accountable for these crimes.

Finally, what needs to be done is the whole Justice Department structure should be overhauled by making the Office of Legal Counsel independent of administrations so that it is staffed not by political appointees but by veteran government legal bureaucrats. This would prevent future misdeeds. But before we even get here and if we want to have any legal credibility left in the world, those who tortured must be held accountable. Period.

Republicans' Slide into Right-Wing Nuttery

2009-04-16T05:59:00.000-07:00

The already bruising fight over the Republican primary in Pennsylvania for Arlen Specter's Senate seat, in May 2010, shows the extent to which the Republican Party has become a composite of sexually frustrated Sarah Palin fans, gun-toting, tax hating militiamen, and overtly racist fanatics who are enraged that the country has dared to elect its first black President. Arlen Specter is one of the last remaining sane voices of the Republicans in the Senate: he supports abortion rights, he was staunchly opposed to unwarranted NSA surveillance of American citizens, he blocked the right-wing nutjob Robert H. Bork from becoming a Supreme Court justice, and finally and most importantly, he voted for the stimulus package. Because of his vote (although he and his other moderate Republican colleagues had destructively watered down the stimulus) hundreds of thousands of police officers, firemen, teachers, professors, teaching assistants, etc, are not being laid off. Our own university's budget is actually being increased 1% this year, for the first time in 5 years! And Specter is to be commended for his opposition to his party's slide into the right-wing wilderness. According to the Congressional Quarterly, he has broken with his party 43% of the time.

It is because of his moderation that he will almost certainly (although it might still be too early to tell) lose his seat to his Republican challenger, an authentic Republican with right-wing nutjub credentials, Pat Toomey who lost to Specter by 2% in the last Republican primary. But after his vote for the stimulus, Specter has seen his popularity among his Republican voters plunge (his Republican challenger is up almost 14 points in the latest poll!). The irony of it all is that Specter's loss in the primary to Toomey would be wonderful news for the Democrats who would then almost certainly win that seat in November 2010 since Pennsylvania's demographics and voting pattern has shifted to the left, mimicking the country-wide trend (with the exception of the South). This has left Republicans like Specter vulnerable to right-wing vultures who love to campaign on socially divisive issues.

Specter's ostracism from his party shows the extent to which the Republican party has fatalistically accepted being the party of the right-wing, content with talking to itself rather than to the larger American electorate. This would be all good news to me, who as you probably know thinks that the Republican Party has pretty much destroyed this country during their 8-year rule, but I do think our country needs healthy, vibrant, and constructive opposition. Without an intellectually vibrant Republican Party, the Democrats may lose their way pretty soon. And that's the bad news....

Accessory to Murder

2009-04-15T06:11:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I wrote about the impact our gun culture is having on the drug wars in Mexico and this morning's NYT confirms this in staggering detail. According to the Times, drug cartels in Mexico have been using individuals in the US (Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico) who have no criminal record and who are strapped for cash to buy weapons and smuggle them across the border. The criminal lack of gun control in our country means that anyone can walk into a store and buy as many AK-47s as they want. For example, this is exactly what happened the other day when a 28 year old unemployed man from Houston bought an assault rifle in cash. Since he had no criminal record and the gun dealer only cares about making a profit, he walked out. A few weeks later that same gun was traced as having been the murder weapon in the killing of three Mexican police officers. In another instance, an American woman walked into a store in Houston and tried to buy an AK-47 even though she knew nothing about weapons. After the suspicious gun dealer informed her she could face up to 10 years in prison if she was buying weapons for someone else, she walked out bewildered.

But even if you have a criminal record you can still legally buy as many rifles as you can. The NRA's ability to block Congress' attempts to regulate gun shows means that gun dealers at these shady shows can sell their weapons to anyone under the sun even (and they often do) to convicted killers: no background check is required, and no reporting to the ATF or any other branch of our government is required. It turns out that drug dealers from Mexico have been using some of these shows themselves in buying weapons and then smuggling them across the border and then using them to kill Mexican police officers. According to our statistics, over 90% of guns in Mexico come from our country.

And what does the criminal NRA say about this? Their argument is so childish and dishonest that it would not merit a response were they not so powerful in the halls of power in this country. An NRA spokesman says that since these dealers will get their guns anyway, why tighten the laws?! This is like a murderer saying "oh my victim would have been shot by another criminal, so why blame me for the murder." And that's exactly our crime in Mexico: accessory to murder.

When President Obama is in Mexico this Thursday, the Mexican President should remind him that the US is obligated by international law to halt the flow of gun smuggling from our country into Mexico. Since these weapons are coming from the territory where the US government is the sovereign, we have a moral and more importantly, legal, obligation to seize these weapons. And tight gun control laws are essential in doing this. Gun shows have to be regulated: 1) every purchase of a weapon has to be recorded and reported to the ATF, including the serial number for the weapon; 2) there needs to be a long waiting period for anyone who wants to acquire more than a hunting rifle, 3) mandatory background checks need to be imposed on every gun dealer, including those at gun shows; and 4) most importantly, the Congress has to re-institute the assault weapons ban, which Clinton had put in place and Bush had criminally allowed to lapse (with the Democrats' acquiescence)-this would ban murderous weapons such as AK-47s.

As long as we do not tighten our gun control laws we will continue to be accessories to murder.

Taxation in Nature

2009-04-14T06:07:00.001-07:00

In commemorating the dreaded tax day, the NYT is running a fascinating articlethis morning on the presence of taxation methods among most species in nature. It turns out that our abstracted and sophisticated tax code is not all that dissimilar to the tax codes present in many animal kingdoms on the planet. For example, researchers at Harvard have discovered that when rhesus monkey finds high quality food (such as ripe coconut) he/she is supposed to give a characteristic food call to fellow monkeys. This means that the food will be shared. What happens if the monkey doesn't follow the proper tax procedure? Well, call it an audit: if the cheating monkey is discovered as having not shared his/her food, the group will not only take away all of his food, but the most dominant among them will beat him mercilessly in front of the group. Not that different from an IRS audit I guess.

Benjamin Franklin may have compared paying taxes to dying (although the wonderful thing about Franklin is you never know when he was being serious), but toll collection is widespread in nature and seems to be an integral part of survival. Each individual has to contribute to the group. Another fascinating example are the bell miner birds of Australia. In preparing the nest for the young ones, the pairs of breeding adults are helped by male youthful helpers who provide a steady supply of nest-making material, and food for the young. In return, they get to stay within the well-protected colony of their fellow species. Not much different than us paying taxes to the Pentagon, I guess.

According to human behavior scientists, humans have had different kinds of elaborate taxing schemes for hundreds of thousands of years. In fact, taxation seems to have become a part of our survivalist DNA. So, what do we do with those idiot "tea party" protesters? Should we follow the example of rhesus monkeys?

Obama's Education Agenda

2009-04-13T06:14:00.000-07:00

Obama is facing yet another ferocious fight in Congress in the coming weeks, this time over his education agenda. The main point of contention is his plan to replace subsidized student loans made by banks with direct government lending. The private student lending industry is of course up in arms about this because for years they have been imposing hefty fees on student loans that are subsidized by the government anyway. They have used these fees to enrich themselves while students are left in a limbo of uncertainty on whether or not they could qualify, how much interest and fees they have to repay, etc. Last week, Sallie Mae, one of the industry's giants, reported that despite losing $213 million in 2008, it paid its CEO more than $4.6 million in cash and stock options and its vice chairman more than $13.2 million, including the use of a company plan. While they did not take any bailout money, the private lending industry would have collapsed as a whole if it were not for government help. So what does Obama want to do?

Since the government already guarantees repayment of these loans up to 97% these loans have been risk-free for banks. Obama wants to replace these loans with direct government lending and redirect the profits to pay for Pell Grants, which are invaluable to struggling students. The direct lending program is already being used by over 1,500 schools nationwide. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the plan would save $94 billion over the next decade and this would be the money the government would have to spend on Pell Grants which would increase every year to keep up with inflation thereby removing considerable amount of uncertainty in students' lives over whether or not Pell Grents would be available. Some powerful Congressional Democrats are up in arms because they would no longer have any control over the lending industry and would have to spend money on Pell Grants while the private lending industry and their lobbyists argue that this would leave private industry employees unemployed.

The government could absorb some of the employees from the private lending industry putting them in charge of loan processing, etc, but there is absolutely no reason this shouldn't be done. It is about time the government would start putting students ahead of banks' profits. And that's exactly what Obama will do. And no one can argue otherwise. This is why he should come out in front of the American people and dare these lobbyists and Congressional opponents to publicly oppose the plan.

Return of Internationalism

2009-04-12T07:40:00.000-07:00

After eight years of narrow-minded cowboy-styled posturing against the rest of the world, the United States, I think, is returning to the tradition of internationalism. George W. Bush argued that Sept.11th had made the US immune to those international laws which it saw as hampering its "war on terror": the Geneva Conventions, the 1984 Convention Against Torture, international Cold War-era laws dealing with arms race, among others. The effects of this paradigm shift have been devastating for both, the US and the world: the image of the US had completely diminished in the eyes of most; rights of US' detainees (some of whom who were indeed terrorists, and some who were innocent) violated; the images of naked human pyramids from Abu Ghraib prison, the photograph of an American soldier draping the statue of Saddam Hussein with the American flag. All of these images portrayed an America which had become drunk with hubris, ignorant (and apathetic) towards the needs and interests of the world, and consumed with the Crusade-inspiring prosylitizing mission of "bringing democracy to the Middle East."

No more. The election of Barack Obama has already done amazingly positive things for our country and the rest of the world. The US no longer tortures. The CIA no longer has "black sites," as the new CIA director Leon Panetta declared the other day. Our Justice Department is run not by President's cronies whose purpose is to draft memos that would support policies that the administration had already decided upon, but instead, an Attorney General who is so intellectually and morally honest as to drop an entire multi-million dollar investigation against a leading Republican Senator (Ted Stevens) due to prosecution's misconduct.

Most importantly for our long-term health, the US is returning to the international law community. Obama has signaled the US' intention to re-join the UN Human Rights Committee, which the Bush administration boycotted, he has reimposed Geneva Convention rules on our treatment of detainees, and re-instituted the Army Field Manual as the blueprint for interrogations, and has signaled a significant shift away from bullying to the respect of other nations' sovereignty (in the case of Iran). Finally, the US is not only NOT boycotting the world's efforts to fight global warming, but it is LEADING the diplomatic orchestra to set up a new post-Kyoto treaty in the upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen.

Our re-discovered respect for the international community of nations is having immensely positive ramifications here at home. The US courts are moving in the direction of many European courts in signaling a more activist and progressive tone. Previously restricted to the more liberal coasts of the US, even the courts in America's mid-Western heartland are following the wind change: the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional, triggering a legalization of gay marriage in this state. Sensing the shift in the country's collective mood, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg, one of the most liberal justices on our court, openly said in Ohio that she disagreed with the more conservative Justices (Roberts, Scalia, and Alito) when it came to the influence of foreign law on our law. The US Supreme Court should cite decisions of foreign judges when issuing opinions since the US belongs to the larger legal community of the world. If we ignore the international law, then our law will not get cited at all in foreign jurisprudence. Significantly, she cited the recent Israeli Supreme Court's decision, banning the IDF from torturing its prisoners. "Why shouldn't I cite this decision," Justice Ginsburg stated.

The rule of international law is back and we are all better off for it!

Eric Hobsbawm: End of Capitalism?

2009-04-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

In his brilliant article in yesterday's Guardian, the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm offers his assessment of the impact of the current economic crisis. According to Hobsbawm, the meltdown has not only destroyed the fetishism of the free-market, but has also confronted the Left with a seemingly unsolvable puzzle: what alternative can it offer? In other words, while the crisis might have left the Reagan/Thatcher-worshipping Right speechless, it has also accelerated the identity crisis of the Left that has been brewing since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Hobsbawm argues that the meltdown of capitalism has brought the experimentation of the 20th century to a full circle: the failure of the Soviet-style socialism led to the global march of Thatcherism which is being destroyed in front of our eyes. But, Hobsbawm convincingly argues, there are no ready-made solutions. The Left has no coherent progressive policy that can offer to the millions of unemployed and disenfranchised in offering a new way for the world's economy.

A huge part of the reason for our stunning lack of alternatives, according to Hobsbawm, is the fact that the British Labor had uncritically adopted the Thatcherite fetishism of free-market because the British Left had become fearful of the dominance of the Conservatives. Thus, both, Blair and Gordon Brown--both of whom Hobsbawm brilliantly dubs "Thatcher in trousers"--did exactly what Bill Clinton, a liberal Republican, did in the US: opened up markets to the influx of foreign capital, turned London into the financial capital of money-laundering and a haven for the zillioners of the world. But what this policy ignored were the results it had produced: while London might have become more chic and wealthier, it had become so only for a select few while most Brits could no longer afford to live in the city, or send their kids to good schools. Hobsbawm blames Thatcherite economics for making Britain into the ground-zero of the current economic meltdown.

But what is brilliant about Hobsbawm is his soberness. The failure of free market capitalism does not mean a return to socialism. No one is suggesting this not only because of the latter's potential political illiberalism and oppression, but also because of its sluggishness and inefficiency (although educational achievements of the system should not be underestimated). So what next?

Hobsbawm's prescription for a new progressive policy is based on one simple principle: economic growth should be seen as the means to an end, and not an end in itself. Economic policy can no longer be about maximizing the GDP and the individual incomes, but the public "capabilities" through collective action. This must mean public non-profit initiative even if it only includes redistribution of wealth. In the words of Hobsbawm, a truly progressive policy for the early 21st century should consist of "public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain." But isn't this what socialism is all about? And if so, isn't Hobsbawm himself trapped in his own maze?

I am also not sure that Hobsbawm is correct in his assumption that the current meltdown represents a whole-scale destruction of capitalism as we know it. As he himself admits, most governments are still deeply wedded to the idea of free capitalism and the very policy they have implemented to get us out of the crisis (i.e. Obama and Gordon's bank bailouts) are based on the principle that might have gotten us here in the first place: free market is still the best option. The recent "glimmers of hope," to quote our President, when it comes to our economy (the slowly rising consumer confidence, DOW's gains, decrease in job loses, and profits for banks), might actually prove Hobsbawm wrong.

After all, it was Hobsbawm who in the early 1990s predicted the end of nationalism, just 2 years before nationalist violence would ravage what it had been known as Yugoslavia. Thus, his assessment now might be more product of wishful thinking than a sober prediction. But this remains to be seen...

Our descent into violence

2009-04-09T05:51:00.001-07:00

Pittsburgh: a felon with an AK-47 guns down three police officers. In Oakland, four police officers gunned down by another felon with an assault rifle. In Washington State, a frustrated wife-beater mows down five of his kids with a rifle while they were playing on their lawn in a trailer park: the kids were easier targets because he hadn't been able to track down his wife. And then the 13 dead last week in Binghampton after an insane former immigrant walked into an immigration center and shot randomly because he thought people were making fun of his poor English skills. In one month, 57 people lost their lives to mass shootings, all committed with weapons that had been banned by the Assault weapons ban that Bush let expire in 2004.

Our fetishism for guns is spilling over to our southern neighbors as Mexico struggles desperately to fight the drug cartels whom our demand for drugs has made incredibly rich while the lack of gun control laws has made weapons smuggling across the border a piece of cake.

Our country seems to be brewing with anger. Driving in rush hour traffic is enough to witness people slamming their steering wheels and shouting at each other, middle fingers flying from all lanes. Some are frustrated by their boring jobs. Some, many, by the lack of jobs and they have become addicted to watching the rants of lunatics on Fox News. Many of them are angry because they think Obama is the anti-Christ who will take away their guns in a major offensive against our very freedom. The delusional representative from Minnesota Michelle Bachmann warned that our President is getting ready to institute "re-education" camps for young people. Hannity thanked her for "defending our freedom against tyranny." The borderline schizophrenic Glenn Beck warned that "they don't surround us, we surround them," as he cried, begging for our country to be taken back. Take our country back from whom?

If Fox News sounds even crazier than they normally do--as lately they have clearly transgressed into the militia loony territory--we really have to be worried. These appalling statistics should give us pause: 17,000 Americans murdered each year and more than 70% by guns; our murder rate is three times that of Canada and England and five times that of Germany.

The Democrats need to use this tragically deadly month to pass strict gun control laws, including the assault weapons ban, and ignore the NRA maniacs. Even if this means losing the next round of elections.

Medical "supervision" of torture

2009-04-07T05:52:00.001-07:00

The New York Times reported this morning that the long-classified investigative report by the International Committee of Red Cross outlines the participation of medical personnel, including physicians, in torturing the 14 "high-level" detainees who were eventually transferred to Guantanamo. According to the previously classified report, the CIA interrogators were almost always supervised by medical personnel who would often order them to either stop, continue, or adjust the torturing procedure. As a reminder, the full report had been disclosed earlier and it had outlined the types of torture the CIA used: slamming the prisoner into a wall, having them shackled to the ceiling for hours at a time, sleep deprivation, locking the prisoner in small cages, and of course waterboarding. In one disturbing description, a one-legged prisoner said he was ordered to stand on his remaining leg for hours and a doctor would occasionally inspect the swelling and once the swelling of the leg became really bad, the doctor ordered him to sit down.

The Red Cross concludes that this behavior of the medical personnel violated not only the code of medical ethics but the international law: “The totality of the circumstances in which the 14 were held effectively amounted to an arbitrary deprivation of liberty and enforced disappearance, in contravention of international law,”

There have been some recent hopeful developments in Europe that suggest that there may be some justice coming to the torturers-in-chief of the Bush administration. Apparently, a Spanish court--presided over by the same prosecutor who relentlessly prosecuted the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet--has ordered an inquiry into the potential war crimes of 6 Bush officials, all lawyers, who sanctioned torture. The officials include, David Addington (Cheney's chief of staff and the main architect of torture), John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales, among others. If the court concludes that war crimes were committed, it is bound law to issue arrest warrants. Then it would be up to the Obama administration to either, extradite the former officials or try them here. But even if Obama does not do either, these officials could no longer leave the US without being arrested as soon as they stepped foot on foreign soil.

Given the fact that after World War II there were about 70 cases of medical personnel prosecuted for participating in Nazi war crimes, the list of defendants at the Spanish court needs to be expanded, substantially!

A glimmer of hope for the Middle East?

2009-04-01T19:18:00.000-07:00

Seymour Hersh writes in the most recent issue of the New Yorker that there seem to be some real openings for a comprehensive peace settlement in the Middle East, involving Syria, Israel, Iran, and of course, the United States.

The hope comes from a recent thawing of the tense relationship between Syria and the United States as Assad has made overtures to the US that he might be willing to negotiate. As evidence, Hersh summarizes a series of meetings between Israeli and Syrian officials with the mediation of Turkey as well as the overtures of the Obama administration for unconditional direct talks. The main controversies, in the eyes of the US, swirl around Syria's housing of the Hamas leader in exile, its support of Hezbollah, and Iran's influence in Syria. It seems, however, that Assad's openness to talks with the US have really worried Iran who is afraid to lose its influence over Syria and remain even more isolated in case a deal was reached between Syria and the US. Assad wrote emails to Hersh in which he clearly stated his desire for continuing negotiations with Israel over Golan Heights (which Israel took from Syria in the 1967 war), and which are rich in water, the most precious and scarce resource in the region. Assad has even intimated that he might be willing to consider leasing the area to Israeli access if the latter gave the sovereignty over the area back to the Syrians and evacuated thousands of Israeli settlers who have expanded their illegal settlements.

Hersh's report shows the extent of destructiveness of Dick Cheney even in the last throes of the Bush administration. According to Hersh's reliable and well-connected sources (and I have no doubt about this as he is a superb journalist), during Israel's brutal attack on Gaza in December and early January, then President Elect Obama was on the phone with Israel trying to get them to stop the invasion before his inauguration. According to Hersh, Cheney was also talking to Israel, but telling them not to trust Obama because he was "pro-Palestinian" and would not "make it in the big leagues." From a man who derailed our fight against terror, brought us torture, and destroyed our reputation, this is a pretty gutsy statement.

The election of the far-right wing Netanyahu and his insane foreign Minister Lieberman dim these hopes for peace especially after Lieberman said today that the government is not bounded to follow the Road map for peace that was negotiated in 2007. His history of making explicitly racist statements about Arabs, and demanding that all Arabs in Israel take loyalty oaths, makes it really hard to see how it would be Lieberman who oversees the evacuation of settlers from the West Bank or the Golan Heights.

So for now, everything still seems frozen, but there are some early signs of thawing. It may still not include the Palestinians, but if Obama could score some sort of a deal with the Syrians this would go a long way towards opening that heavy door to peace. The spontaneous meeting of Obama's Afghanistan envoy Holbrooke and an Iranian high official at a meeting in the Hague also points to thawing between the US and Iran.

It also shows that civility goes a long way in international diplomacy.

Decline of the West

2009-03-31T05:47:00.000-07:00

One of the very few positive outcomes of this economic meltdown may be the inevitable decline of Western power in the world and the waning of its previously overbearing reach over less developed nations. While it used to be the case that through its powerful institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the West could place entire economies under strict surveillance and dictate the ways in which these countries would structure their economies. All in return for loans. No more.

Brazil's President da Silva might have come dangerously close to racism when he proclaimed that the crisis was caused by "white blue-eyed" people, but the general point of this statement is correct: the Western powers, particularly the United States, shaped the post WWII world in accordance with their visions which they self-righteously declared was the only prescription for growth.

As the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, Western style, Reaganesque capitalism seemed vindicated. Eastern European and postcolonial countries rushed to dismantle the carefully constructed social programs while they tore down their borders, inviting foreign capital to wreak havoc on their previously closely regulated markets. The new members of the EU were promised life-long prosperity as the IMF dictated the terms of the loans to the newcomers who were drunk on capitalist fervor. Well it turns out, to quote the Brazilian President again "they [the West] have demonstrated that they know nothing about economics."

The G20 summit in London represents a tectonic, once-in-a-generation shift in economic power in the world. For the first time, countries that had been previously treated like unruly school children (Brazil, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, India, China) are invited to the big table. In return for their cash donations to the IMF, they will obtain extensive voting rights at the G20, while the previously country club-like Financial Stability Forum in Switzerland will also include 10 new members (emerging markets), including Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and China.

It is not an exaggeration to say that we are truly witnessing the disappearance of the idea of "the West" itself.

Betrayal of Europe

2009-03-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

As President Obama prepares to leave for his European trip--which will take him to the G20 summit in London, then to France, Czech Republic and finally to Turkey--divisions are already emerging between the European approach(es) and US approach to solving the economic quagmire. In an unusually blunt interview with the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed that while Obama might enjoy popularity of a rock star all across Europe, the Germans oppose Obama's stimulus solutions. The normally reserved and superbly intelligent Merkel said in a moment of candor: "International policy is, for all the friendship and commonality, always also about representing the interests of one's own country."

What this statement exposes is not only Germany's disagreement with Washington's approach to the crisis, but it reveals the fragility of the very idea of Europe itself. The idea of the European Union emerged on the ashes of post World War II Europe when a few French and German intellectuals tapped into the legacy of European idealism, mixed with the German Catholic tradition of solidarity, to create a blueprint for an all European Union. The idea was to connect all the European countries, which had been sporadically each other's enemies for centuries, through a series of multilateral trade agreements. The core of the idea was the belief that if European countries became inextricably linked to each other through their economic interests, that a common European identity would emerge, which would eventually serve as an arch over all the particular national identities, which had been the cause of so much suffering on the continent. That is, the emergence of a pan-European identity has always been the driving force of the European Union.

Angela Merkel's statement, coupled with the recent policies (or lack thereof) of the European Union towards solving the crisis shows that 17 years after the European Union became a reality with the signing of the Maastricht treaty (1992), the idea of a pan-European identity and solidarity is being displaced by the return of the good ole' nation-state realpolitik rooted in national self-interests.

The European response(s) to the crisis have been very troubling. The big European countries have repeatedly refused to extend a hand to their poorer Eastern European neighbors whom they had just let join the EU. Despite the fact that most of the E.European economies, of countries like Hungary and Serbia, had come to the edge of the precipice because of high-interest loans from Western European banks, the Western members of the EU have refused to shore up International Monetary Fund's aid to Eastern Europe. Keeping in mind that Eastern European countries were sold the idea of the EU on the premise that after living under the tyranny of inefficient communism they would be enjoying a life-long prosperity under capitalism, this represents a serious betrayal of Western European promise to Eastern Europe. In fact, it represents a near-death blow to the very idea of Europe since it shows that European leaders do not think in terms of larger European interests, but rather national self-interests.

What is even more disturbing is that these policies are very self-destructive. For example, if Eastern European banks are not bailed out, then they will not be able to repay their loans to Western European banks, which in turn might bring some of these down because they are heavily leveraged in the E.European markets. With the fall of major Western European banks, the whole European banking system might be endangered.

Obama has to stress to Merkel and other Western Europeans that they have an obligation to help their poorer neighbors recover and to spend on their own recovery. Merkel's opposition to spending plans is reasonable given Germany's shrinking population and the fears of inflationary pressures on the Euro, but if Germany, France and Britain continue to act separately from the rest of Europe at a time of crisis, the end of the crisis might be followed by Eastern European countries deciding that joining the EU was not in their best interest. And I wouldn't blame them.

Israel between Religious Intolerance and Secular Pragmatism

2009-03-28T06:27:00.000-07:00

The fallout from Israel's invasion of Gaza this winter reveals an intensifying struggle between the secularist liberals and religious nationalists over the very identity of Israel. The invasion of Gaza has been followed by testimonies of many soldiers who witnessed brutal murders of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military. According to these reports, which have set off an army investigation in Israel, Israeli military was purposefully lax in its rules of engagement with civilians. There are disturbing reports of Israeli troops shooting Palestinian women and children, including the killing of an old lady by sniper. The whole-scale demolition of Palestinian homes in Gaza was not only tolerated by top Israeli military commanders, but encouraged. The Human Rights Watch has said that there is enough evidence in Gaza to warrant a war crimes investigation of Israeli troops.

But what the testimonies of many Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza reveal is that many of the crimes were committed, or encouraged, by the religious nationalists who have become extremely powerful within the ranks of the Israeli military. The chief rabbi of the military has recently been reprimanded for distributing a booklet warning the troops not to show mercy to the enemy. There have been reports of religious nationalist soldiers anointing themselves with oil before the battle and calling for all Arabs to be kicked out of the Holy Land because they were impeding Israel's God-given mission to resettle the land. The fact that most of these religious nationalists, including the army's chief rabbi, are West Bank settlers shows the depth of the Israeli division.

The society seems to be divided between the secular liberals who desperately want a peace with the Palestinians, even though this will have to include a complete abandonment of West Bank settlements and the return to the pre-1967 borders; and the far right religious fanatics, many of whom are West Bank settlers, and who believe they are on God's mission therefore the Palestinians are the intruders in the Holy Land. The fact that the recently formed government includes a man who openly called for Arabs to be expelled from Israel does not bide well for the secularists.

The fight between the secularists and the religious fanatics is a struggle to define the future of Zionism. Would Zionism succumb to the religious intolerance which would seriously endanger the future of the Israeli state? Or would Zionism take a more secular and pragmatic route, acknowledging that a two-state solution is the only way that Israel can remain true to its founding mission to be the state of all Jews.

Governor Jindal thinks torture is funny!

2009-03-25T07:45:00.000-07:00

In a response to Obama's news conference last night, the new prophet of the Republican party Mister Rogers, umm sorry, Governor Jindal defended the worryingly obese Rush Limbaugh in his insistence that it is alright to wish that Obama fails. Xeroxing his speech from the most recent right wing talking points memo, Mister Rogers claimed that the media criticism of this wish represents "political correctness run amok." Really? Remember when a few brave Democrats dared to question Bush's "war on terror" back in the early 2000s, they were accused of supporting terrorists? Remember how Senator John Kerry's criticism of the Vietnam War was used to question his service in Vietnam? Worst of all, do you not remember dear Governor, how the Republican warmongering machine compared the amputee war veteran Georgia Senator Max Cleland to Osama Bin Laden, ousting him from the Senate?

But the most offensive remark came when Jindal joked about his disastrous initial response to Obama's first press conference, comparing it to torture. "They are not allowed to show my speech at Gitmo anymore," he laughed. "They've banned that."
Now, I might be a wild-eyed liberal whose political correctness has run amok, but this statement betrays the depth of Republican immorality. Their casual use of torture and Gitmo, the most disgraceful chapters of the US history, as punchlines in a joke are an insult to our common humanity and our love for this country.

If Obama's remark about the Special Olympics warranted a deep apology to the Special Olympics folks (which I think it did), then Governor Jindal's joke about torture warrants his stepping down from the role as the new Republican voice. It also constitutes a candid, albeit denigrating, admission that his party, led by George Bush, engaged in torture. The Republicans need to be reminded of this every minute of every hour of every day!

Shame on Governor Jindal!

Defending the Enlightenment

2009-03-24T16:06:00.000-07:00

The legacy of the Enlightenment has been under a continuous assault not just from the religious right in this country, but has been one of the most favorite targets for the postmodern and postcolonial critique so popular in the academia in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This critique was based on the insistence that the experience of the Enlightenment is a Western experience deeply rooted in the Western European milieu. Therefore, secularism--and its insistence on the separation of church and state--is a Western construction that has been imposed onto non-Western societies either by native authoritarian leaders (Kemal Ataturk in Turkey) or European colonial powers (the British in India, the Austro-Hungarians in Bosnia, etc). This is more than a purely academic debate. What is at heart here is the legitimacy and the future of secular age.

The Enlightenment came out of Europe's bloody religious wars, the Reformation, and the scientific revolution. The right to think freely using reason, empirical observation, challenge dogmas, and push organized religion out of politics, came out of bloody battles on the European continent. While it can be argued that the particular form of secularism in many non-Western European societies was imposed during a foreign rule, such as during the Austro-Hungarians in Bosnia-Herzegovina, it is equally true that the ideas of the Enlightenment almost always had native voices. Therefore just like the French Revolution of 1789 (that political climax of the Enlightenment) cannot be considered only a French phenomenon (due to its long-term consequences, origins, and echoes throughout Europe and the world), the Enlightenment should not be seen as an exclusively Western European experience.

The critique of the Enlightenment is often brought up by the critics of French/Turkish style of secularism and in defense of the right of Muslim women to wear the Muslim veil in public space. By agreeing to this critique many Western academics have joined in the chorus of condemnation of the Enlightenment by defending the right of Islam to obligate its female followers to wear the veil in public institutions. What this argument completely ignores that Islam itself, like any other religion, is a political ideology. The supposed requirement of women to wear a veil (and the type of veil) is a political decision based on a certain interpretation of the Kur'an and the Hadith.

By insisting that the secularism of the Enlightenment is a Western construction, these critics ignore (purposefully or in ignorance) the fact that all of the strands of Islam (and any other organized religion) are also rooted in a particular historical experience of the Middle East, the Balkans or wherever. Many critics of the Enlightenment also point to Islam's emphasis on God rather than the state in arguing that the separation of church and state in an Islamic context becomes irrelevant. However, this criticism takes Islam's argument about the elevation of God above the state at its face value potentially entrusting those who represent the state with the voice of God (if there is no distinction of God and State then what is the purpose of the state if not to articulate the voice of God?).

In other words, yes all of the ideologies with which we live are historically constructed. But given the history of religion's violence against anyone who dares to challenge its irrational dogmas, I'd rather stick with my Enlightenment. So, let me be!

A 5-Step Recovery Program for Republicans

2009-03-23T11:06:00.000-07:00

If the Republicans are ever to become relevant again in our national discourse, which I hope they will one day since we need a healthy opposition party, they have to go through a tough 5-step rehab:

1. Stop telling the world that America is the best country on earth. Coming from many Republicans who have never left the place this statement echoes ignorance of such magnitude that one always wonders if people who utter such nonsense are not merely children in adults' bodies. Going around the globe with a big stick shouting that America is the best democracy in the world, when it clearly it isn't so, can be pretty obnoxious. After Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and CIA's "black sites" fiasco we as Americans have forever lost the right to say such things.

2. Stop using shallow symbols to attract support. Just because Michael Steel happens to be black, it does not mean that he can miraculously save the Republican Party from plunging deeper into the abyss of irrelevance. By picking their "own black man" to counter Obama, the Republicans have once again shown that they really do not get that "other America." They do not understand that Obama's appeal comes not from the color of his skin, but from his experience and his ability to channel that experience to the public and his specific policy proposals. Joe the Plumber is another example of Republicans' utterly idiotic embrace of shallow symbols over substance. The fact that the man is not only NOT a plumber, but also a total moron with nothing mildly intelligent to say does not seem to worry the Republicans about their new symbol. The embrace of symbols without substance just confirms the Republicans' failure to connect with the diverse America.

3. Take economics classes. I am not an economist but this crisis has made me read more widely and deeply about economics than I ever had before. Reading, that thing that Bush abhorred and Palin mocked, can be instructive, so I suggest the Republicans pick up Econ books and read about the Great Depression and the way government spending is essential to any economic rescue.

4. Drop the fake populist act. The Republican party has been the party of big business and it is their policy of deregulation that got us to where we are today. Now, this doesn't mean that the Democrats are blameless. Let's remember that it was during the Clinton years that the infamous credit default swaps became legalized and it was under the Democratically-influenced Freddie and Frannie real estate giants sub-prime mortgages became widespread. But the policy of Reagan-inspired deregulation, fetishism of the free markets, and hatred of the government, are at the very heart of the Republican party. So Republicans' outrage at AIG bonuses and bailout money only reveals the deeply embedded hypocrisy running through the very core of their mission.

5. Stop embracing anti-intellectualism. George W. Bush became a hero of the Republican party in the 2000s due to his embrace of know-nothing ignorance, his supposed ability to speak from the gut, his acknowledgment that he doesn't read newspapers, and his cowboy attitude. The Republicans' hatred of "elite liberals" included the embrace of Sarah Pallin despite the fact that her knowledge of the main issues confronting the country was way below the level of a middle school A average student. The Republicans have to acknowledge that we need the "elite" with top-notch education credentials to run our country, particularly at the face of such giant problems.

If the Republican party was asking me for advice on how to start emerging from the wilderness in order to become relevant in our national discourse, they should follow this not-so-simple 5 step recovery program.

Obama responds to Cheney

2009-03-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

"How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney?...It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment." This is how in an interview that aired on "60 Minutes" Obama responded to Cheney's ludicrous accusation that Obama's intention to close down Guantanamo was making America less safe. In one of the toughest responses to Darth Vader yet, Obama has made clear that he will break with the criminal policies of the Bush administration. This means not only shut down the Guantanamo gulag, but also process all the individuals there, release those who are innocent, and restore the right to haebas corpus to those who we suspect are dangerous.

But Obama needs to go one step further: those who are responsible for orchestrating, executing, and not preventing the campaign of torture need to be held accountable. They need to be tried either under US laws for breaches of the US Constitution, and numerous US federal statues, including the US Convention Against Torture, as well as the grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

As I finally finished reading Jane Mayer's book last night, I thought of all those innocent people who ended up being snatched by CIA black-masked commandos, "rendered" to one of CIA's "black sites" and exposed to torture we never imagined our government would be capable of committing. For example, the German citizen el-Masri was arrested by Macedonian police on the Macedonian border suspected of being a member of AL-Q. He was turned over to the CIA who under the direct instructions from Washington kidnapped him and threw him into the black hole of CIA's world. He was stripped naked, a depository inserted into his anus, wrapped in diapers, dressed in an orange suit, and huge goggles placed on his eyes while his ears were covered with headphones transmitting loud music. He was held in Afghanistan's CIA-run prisons and tortured because he was supposedly not confessing to his crimes and not naming new names. He was held in captivity for 149 days when the CIA finally realized they had caught the wrong Masri--his passport was not a forgery and the German government demanded that he be released immediately. In an effort to shut him up, he was given a suitcase full of cash, and released on the Albanian border and told "not to look back." Back in Germany he filed a lawsuit against CIA Director George Tenet.

For many others like Masri, Obama represents the America that the world has been waiting for. A kind, just, reasonable, and thoughtful America. America determined to strike back at enemies using the tools of justice which had been admired by the whole world and copied in many constitutions. It is the America in which suspects are tried in open courts no matter what the outcome might be. It is the America that understands the risks that come with having an open and democratic society in which the rule of law is above everything else. It is the America in which the victims of 9/11 hope for those who perpetrated the crimes to be brought to justice without having to violate the very principles which we live by.

It is also important to remember that not all members of the Bush administration participated in the crimes. Many FBI agents, including veteran interrogators, emerged as true defenders of the law and opponents of torture warning Bush officials on numerous occasions that they might be prosecuted one day. The former head of the Office of Legal Council Jack Goldsmith also emerges as a hero who stood up to Cheney and reversed the blank check which his predecessor Yoo had given to the CIA. Joining this group of honorable Americans is also Alberto Mora, former General Counsel for the US Navy who upon seeing the evidence of torture at the prison ordered a full investigation and tried to go up the chain of command in order to stop it. Thus it is important to remember that this is truly one of those issues which are not Republican vs. Democrat. Hopefully, Republicans like John McCain, who himself endured years of terrible torture in Vietnamese gulags, Senator Arlen Specter, Chuck Hagel among others will join Sen. Patrick Leahy in establishing "truth commissions" to investigate these horrendous crimes against our own Constitution, the international law, and humanity in general.

However, knowing that Obama has the helms of our fight against terror helps me sleep a little bit better at night.

Stop with the Populist Outrage!

2009-03-21T06:05:00.001-07:00

I am as outraged about AIG's taxpayer-funded bonuses as any other American, but the populist rage-fanned by the Congress is really getting out of control. Today, a group of "activists" are planning "bus tours" of AIG executives' homes around the country. To do what? Are there any pitchforks on that bus? Meanwhile, the NY Attorney General Cuomo is reconsidering his plans to publish the names of AIG executives who received the infamous bonuses after the government-appointed AIG CEO informed the Congress that the company had received email threats wishing for executives' families to be strangled with piano wire. Iowa Republican Senator Grassley wanted to get his populist creds by calling for the executives to commit suicide the Japanese style.

Ok, chill out. Yes, these bonuses were awful, but they are nothing unexpected. They show the gap between the rich and the rest which capitalism necessarily creates in its constant rush for capital. Instead of scoring cheap political points (which will be forgotten by the 2010 Congressional elections), the Congress needs to act as a voice of reason and use the opportunity to educate the public about the crisis. It should hold hearings like the ones we had after the Watergate, which lasted for 2 years, and were really educational in explaining what had gone wrong in the Nixon administration. Instead of hauling the poor AIG CEO (who by the way, was appointed by the government after the bailouts and had nothing to do with the current mess) and pounding him with harangues, the Congress should help the President get to the bottom of this mess.

However, as an excellent article in the business section of today's NYT points out, the populist rage is seriously hampering our efforts to get out of the crisis:

1. The bailout money to AIG was not a gift, but a loan which means that the company will pay back the taxpayer with interest. But if the company is being pummeled with death threats that hardly helps its stock. No one in the right mind will want to own any piece of this company which makes it harder for the AIG to pay us, the taxpayers-back.

2. It is distracting. Instead of solely focusing on the bonuses, the Congress should investigate how the AIG spent the bulk of the money. For example, why did they pay 100 cents on the dollar to the Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and CitiGroup, the very same companies that bought the risky credit default swaps that had gotten us into this mess to begin with. In other words, why did these companies receive the full value for their dollar? This is even harder to understand if you remember that Godlman Sachs had gotten $25 billion cash infusion (note: former Treasury Secretary Paulson had been the CEO of Goldman Sachs) before getting the bailout money from the AIG.

3. Finally, it is destabilizing. I think the Dems' plans to tax 90% of all the bonuses is a terrible idea. It affects even those in the AIG (and other companies) who had had nothing to do with the mess. Keep in mind that the AIG is an enormous company in which only one division was involved in the credit default swaps mess. The rest, like the insurance division, are hardworking people who are trying to fix the company and help us all fix the economic crisis. But if the Congress issues the bailout money and then keeps changing the rules, it will be impossible to stabilize the market. Also, how can you expect any Wall street investor to participate in Geithner's plans to buy up the infamous toxic assets off of banks' books if they will be attacked by the angry mob every time they turn a profit?

So, the Congress should act like an adult here, step up and start educating the public rather than ride the wave of populist rage in the hope of scoring enough political capital that will hold until the next election in 2010. Barney Frank should hold hearings which would bring in top economic scholars and educate the public (in layman's terms please) about the credit default swaps, "too big too fail" growth of these companies, global capitalism, etc. Maybe then we will be more prepared when the next crisis hits. And it will inevitably hit again. That's just the nature of capitalism.

Universalizing Gay(Human) Rights

2009-03-20T05:47:00.000-07:00

In another reversal of Bush administration's irrational, reactionary, bigoted and downright criminal policies, the Obama administration has pledged to sign the UN Declaration for decriminalization of homosexuality. The declaration has been signed by some 66 countries, including all Western countries plus Australia, Japan, and Canada. Many countries (including most Muslim countries) oppose it. The resolution was drafted under the sponsorship of France and the Netherlands out of concern that human rights of gays throughout the world are being savagely violated on a daily basis given the fact that homosexuality is considered a crime in 77 countries.

In its characteristically bigoted Texan-style manner, the Bushies argued that had the US signed the declaration it would have exposed itself to violating its own laws, such as the Defense of Marriage Act, by mandating down the road the right of gays to marry. Even though I believe the latter to be an essential human right--guaranteed by the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights--the argument of the Bush administration was simply bullshit since the resolution has no legal enforcement provisions. So, what is the point?

Well consider the fact that the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights has no provisions to enforce them per se. The UN does not have a universal army which can go into a country and prevent human rights abuses (they tried to do that in Bosnia with UN blue helmets and we know how that turned out). But, the power of the UN Assembly is in its ownership of a global podium, a global soapbox from which to put the spotlight on certain issues, such as, in this case, murder, abuse, and discrimination of millions of homosexuals throughout the world. These resolutions can definitely shame and eventually force governments into doing the right thing. Let's remember that the UN's resolutions against Serbia eventually morphed into Milosevic dying in a small prison cell meeting a destiny much better than he truly deserved, but still paying for his crimes.

The resolution will have a powerful impact on Eastern European countries which are trying to join the EU as well as those E.European countries which are already members but which have a history of homophobic violence. As I do not like to criticize anyone before looking into my own backyard, let's take Bosnia-Herzegovina for example, my homeland.

Gay rights in Bosnia remain an underground movement with even heterosexual allies like myself afraid to come out in public and defend their gay fellow citizens from discrimination and abuse. As the public sphere in Bosnia matures and expands, the gay movement has attempted to come out of the closet by organizing a first Queer Festival in Sarajevo between 24 and 28 September 2008. The festival was to include exhibitions, performances, public discussions, movie screenings, all with the purpose of ending gay discrimination and ensuring equality before the law. In the prelude to the festival, the Amnesty International issued a warning to the Bosnian authorities that they were obligated by international law to ensure the safety of the participants of the festival. In the prelude to the festival, there were reports of the Bosnian media fanning the homophobic hysteria. So, how did the festival go? Not so well to say the least.

At the opening of the festival on 25 September 2008 some 70 men, sporting long Wahabbi-style beards and carrying signs "Allahu Ekber" and "Kill the Gays" attacked the gathered festival participants outside of the Academy of Fine Arts, beating them savagely. There were even threats that "fags" would be burned alive because they were violating the beginning of the Muslim month of Ramadan. Despite the alarming warnings from the Amnesty International, the city authorities failed to prevent the Wahabbi thugs from unleashing violence on Bosnia's fragile democracy. To their credit, though, the police intervened and some seven police officers were injured some seriously. The organizers were forced to move the festival underground.

Now, even though I have enormous problems with any kind of religion, Wahabbism that has been imported into Bosnia during the darkest hours of the war is particularly infuriating to me. This is not the first time these extremist fucks have disrupted the fragile civil society in the country. In a small remote village in central Bosnia they had even established a school (just for boys) the Wahhabi style despite instructions from the authorities not to do so, violating the state education laws.

In my mind, the behavior of these groups (and they are very well organized by some leading "religious scholars") has earned them a one-way ticket to an Islamic country of their choice, a procedure I would follow with religious fanatics of all creeds. But the more worrisome thing is the fact that while their violence might have been abhorrent to many Bosnians I know for a fact that homophobia is widespread in Bosnia and that many supported such attacks.

Thus, the UN Declaration on decriminalizing homosexuality has the potential to open up public discussions in societies like Bosnia, which is desperately trying to join the EU. Given the fact that all members of the EU, as far as I know, have expressed support for the Declaration, the latter can also give many straight Bosnians the courage to come out in defense of their gay friends. In short, by universalizing gay rights, the UN can help make them simply human rights and strip the term of its potentially unhelpful exoticism.

Anatomy of a War Crime, Part III

2009-03-19T16:06:00.000-07:00

Continuing the summary of the horrific story in Jane Mayer's book "The Dark Side" let me briefly address the issue of Guantanamo prisoners. In the summer of 2002 the military had become very irritated by lack of information from the prisoners at the camp. The interrogators were hitting a wall with almost every prisoner and when the White House asked to see files, many prisoners did not have any. So, could it be that these were super-trained terrorists trained in the art of evasion and were waiting out the interrogators refusing to give up information on an imminent attack? Not by a long shot.

What Mayer and other investigative journalists have concluded is that the reason why they were not getting anything out of them is because they did not know anything. Where do we get this information? From the CIA! Concerned with the situation CIA sent a senior intelligence officer in the summer of 2002 to the island. He was a man fluent in Arabic who spent hours talking to them, drinking tea, listening to their stories. What he concluded was devastating to the administration: most of these people had nothing to do with terrorism. Let us take several examples.

Among the prisoners was an Arab teenager who was so deranged that he was eating his own feces, and an eighty year old man who was deaf. Another man was a rich Kuwaiti who had spent every year doing charity work in a Muslim country and 2001 happened to be the year he was in Afghanistan. He told the CIA interrogator that he had always bought Cadillacs and was now so furious with his imprisonment he would only buy Mercedeses from now on. A particularly horrific story came from an Iraqi Shiite who fled Iraq due to his opposition to Saddam and he hid in Iran. He was captured in Iran and deported to Afghanistan where he was imprisoned by the Taliban for being a "US spy" for his anti-Saddam activities. In the aftermath of Sept.11th he fled to Pakistan where he was picked up by a warlord and extradited to the US authorities for $5000 bounty. He had no idea what was going on!

A study by the Seaton Hall University Law school supports the findings of the CIA. The study reviewed in depth 517 Guantanamo cases. Of these only 8% had any associations with AL-Qaeda. 55% were not alleged to have engaged in any hostile act against the US at all, remainder were charged with dubious wrongdoing, mostly for fleeing from the US bombs! Only 5% had been captured by US forces and the rest had been captured by local warlords for hefty bounties.

After the summer of 2002, interrogation methods got nastier. The torture that had been approved for CIA at the "black site" prisons abroad now spread to the military: sleep deprivation, threats, humiliations, chaining to the floor, loud music. The situation got so out of control that Condi Rice's lawyer Bellinger tried to get audience with the President but was confronted with Gonzales, Addington (the War Council I have written about before) who told him that detainee policy was off limits, there was nothing to be discussed, they argued. The authorization for the detainee interrogations came from the President personally.

So the claims by the Bush administration that abuses that happened at Gitmo and later Abu Ghraib were sporadic results of frustration and bad behavior are just simply LIES!

In the most recent edition, the New York Review of Books is running an article by Mark Danner titled "US Torture: Voices from the Black sites in which he summarizes the previously classified report by the International Committee of the Red Cross which was the only international organization to interview in depth the 14 high-priority prisoners who were interrogated at CIA prisons. It makes for a very, very depressing read and confirms all the claims made by Mayer in her "The Dark Side."

In any case, it is clear that the Bush administration committed serious breaches of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war, but also the US Convention Against Torture. If the US government won't prosecute Bush officials than all of the countries that are signatories to the Geneva Conventions have a legal obligation to arrest them if they are on their territory and extradite them to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Why Tim Geithner Needs to Resign

2009-03-19T06:01:00.000-07:00

In its article this morning, the Washington Post lays out a pretty clear case of negligence on the part of Timothy Geithner. First let me say that I have nothing against this man: he seems to be brimming with intelligence, speaks Japanese and Chinese, is very cosmopolitan and a hard-worker (works out at 5:30am, comes to work at 6:30 and works 15 hour days often including the weekends). He also has the least envious job of all in the administration: he is a Treasury Secretary at a time of an economic meltdown we haven't seen since the Great Depression. The mere fact that most Americans know who our Treasury Secretary is (and that I am writing about him) shows the extent of trust we have justifiably placed in the government to fix this mess. This is all the more reason why Timothy Geithner needs to resign.

The Washington Post article reveals that the Fed was informed 3 months ago by the AIG that it would pay bonuses to the financial division executives (you know the ones who flushed the company down the toilet) by March 15 deadline. This detail was also put into the company's quarterly filing at the end of the year. So the Treasury Department had a responsibility to know this detail and inform the President about it. The President learned about the bonuses two days ago and was, in the words of his adviser David Axelrod "aggravated" and "a little bit disbelieving." What Obama was aggravated about was not the actual bonuses, since this was to be expected, but the failure of the government to stop them. Tim Geithner said there was nothing the government could do.

While that may be the case now and there is absolutely no way the government can break its contract (which would only further weaken the confidence in the economy), Tim Geithner should have definately seen this one coming. In Sept last year he was the main architect of the first round of bail-out of AIG. After working through the night, Geithner and other NY Fed officials realized the extent of AIG's tentacles throughout the global economy. At the time he wasn't focused on bonuses because he was not a member of a political administration and was thus not really exposed to public pressure. Now, he is. He is Obama's face of the economic rescue efforts and if the public does not have an absolute confidence in these efforts the whole fragile house of cards that Obama has built (and which is already showing signs of working) will collapse.

What is particularly disturbing about the case is the perception of Geithner. I have no doubt he is an honorable man with a strong sense of public service and he wants to do the right thing. He has also been hampered by vacancies in the Treasury Dept due to the slowness of the confirmation process. However, his intimate involvement with the early AIG bailout creates the perception of an impropriety. While there is no evidence there was any such impropriety, the perception is the what matters in both, politics and the economy. So, he should instruct Obama to find another secretary (Paul Krugman please!!) and step aside after Obama has settled on a pick.

In the end, I still think the bailout of AIG and the rest of the financial industry was an absolute necessity. As I am not an economist, I have tried to educate myself about the crisis by reading economists' (not politicians') analyses, including the Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman. They all argue that the extent of AIG in businesses throughout the world as insurers of millions of pension plans, mutual funds, etc, were just simply too much of a glue for the global economy for it to fail. Economic analysts have carefully outlined the aftershocks' of Lehman Brothers' failure last fall which literally caused a collapse of Iceland (yes the entire country) and seriously damaged the European banking system. AIG was even bigger.

Now after we get out of this mess (and we will soon) then we can talk about the argument that "if they are too big to fail, they are too big to exist." Expansion of these companies, often violating anti-monopoly laws, went on without any regulation from the SEC, the Fed, or the Bush White House (of course!). So tighter regulation and an outright ban on credit default swaps has to happen soon. However, I am also afraid that limiting expansion of these companies in the future will undermine the very logic of greed that is (for better or for worse) the engine of capitalism. As Marx aptly concluded some 200 years ago, it is the inherent nature of capitalism to expand. If it doesn't, it fails. Simple as that. So I guess we will always be doomed to periodic crises during which we will always promise to do it better the next time. As soon as the crisis ends, however, the capitalism resumes its risky path.

Collin Powell's Chief of Staff on Cheney: "Cheney is evil"

2009-03-18T21:03:00.000-07:00

"Cheney went on to say in his McLean interview that “Protecting the country’s security is a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business. These are evil people and we are not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.” I have to agree but the other way around. Cheney and his like are the evil people and we certainly are not going to prevail in the struggle with radical religion if we listen to people as he. […]

But al-Qa’ida will be back. Iraq, GITMO, Abu Ghraib, heavily-biased U.S. support for Israel, and a host of other strategic errors have insured al-Qa’ida’s resilience, staying power and motivation. How we deal with the future attacks of this organization and its cohorts could well seal our fate, for good or bad. Osama bin Laden and his brain trust, Aman al-Zawahiri, are counting on us to produce the bad. With people such as Cheney assisting them, they are far more likely to succeed."

(Lawrence Wilkerson, Secretary of State Collin Powell's former Chief of Staff).

Top 10 Daily Things that Wear me Out in Champaign

2009-03-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

Here is my list please feel free to contribute your own. Keep in mind, here I am only talking about the things that annoy me in my everyday routine, not national/international/historical events. (there is another post coming for those as well). So here are my top 10 in the descending order of annoyance.

1. The weather in the Midwest. I have been living in Champaign for almost 6 years now and every year at the end of winter my body comes to the precipice of a complete shutdown. The Siberian temperatures, which here last from late November to late March, coupled with the wind chill of -30 and windgusts that are strong enough to harm your ability to ever have children, wreak havoc on your body and your daily routine. As a defense mechanism, your body recoils every time you go outside, so you are forced to hibernate in your home eating fast food take outs and pizzas. So inevitably I put on at lest 10 additional pounds every winter as I also stop going to the gym. Just when you thought it is over in March, or even early April, another cold front comes in reminding you how shitty you have it.

2. Loud motorcycles. As the winter finally lets up in Champaign, it becomes absolutely gorgeous: the colors, the smell, the soft breeze, and of course, sorority girls' change of attire (hence, the Quad becomes my favorite place to hang). But, and here is the big but, early spring is also the time when all those frustrated, mostly overweight, poorly endowed individuals with motorcycles with exhausts so loud that you can hear them no matter where you are at a time come out blaring across the city. This is particularly annoying if you are enjoying the weather on the patio of my favorite pub Blind Pig and these idiots circle through the same streets over and over, in hope that the big bad machine they are on, and the obnoxious noise can ever compensate for either a) the fact that their obesity has prevented from seeing their penis except an ocassional glance in a mirror; or b) the fact that all those pills, contraptions, and internet programs to enhance the size of their manhood have failed. Just a note: I have no problem with motorcycles and several very good friends of mine have them. But these are normal exhausts producing very normal levels of noise.

3. Cyclists who do not obey traffic rules. As a caveat, I have a great admiration for everyone who rides a bike on a daily basis. I support even a tax hike on all of us in order for the city to be able to pay for additional bike lanes and I am more than happy to see many streets shut down to cars. But, if you are on a bicycle, you are under the same traffic rules as I am in my car. Otherwise, I will hit you with my car. This means: running the red light and whizzing right in front of my car as I am going 45mph will probably get you killed. Riding your bike on an already narrow sidewalk is ILLEGAL! Get your ass on the street in that biking lane, honestly! As a pedestrian, I have already been relegated to a very very narrow sidewalk that I have to share with throngs of slowly moving, flip-flop wearing, hung-over, I-pod listening undergrads and now you are telling me I have to move for your stupid bike. Also, if you do this, you are exposing yourself to a real possibility that I will push your bike out of my way. And my biggest, biggest reservoir of anger comes gushing out at cyclists who ride their bike on the quad! Are you fucking kidding me? This is especially annoying between classes when you have anywhere between 5-10,000 students moving from one building to another in a space of about 10 minutes. And now you want to rush through the crowd with your bike? These people need to be slapped with a huge fine.

4. Champaign-Urbana's city traffic grid. I swear this city was designed by mentally handicapped urban planners. What in the world would possess someone to make every major and semi-major street the main artery through the city? Since we only have two outlets to the 74 interstate, Prospect, Springfield and Neil are ALWAYS, ALWAYS, swamped with traffic. Green street, that perpetually exhausting jewel of urban planning is always packed with undergrads rushing to their classes in their shiny, loud cars. Seriously, shut down Green street to traffic, make it into a pedestrian/cycling zone. Make several more entries from the highways into the city so that Springfield (outside of my door) does not sound like a highway at every moment of the day. This would also make walking to campus (something I LOVE to do and always do weather permitting) a pleasurable rather than exhausting experience.

5. The temperature in the older buildings at the University. As we historians have been relegated to the older buildings (but beautiful) of the University--Greg Hall, Lincoln Hall until recently, etc--we also experience the emotional rollercoaster that is the temperature inside of these classrooms. If the temperature is let's say a pleasant 60 F, you can be sure that it will be over 80 inside of Greg Hall classrooms. If, on the other hand, the temperature is the steaming, disgustingly swampy 99 F, it will be around 30 F in the buildings. I mean, whatta fuck is so hard about controlling the temperature? The library is the biggest example of this. We have one of the best libraries in the world and the poor staff there has to work with a big fan over their heads at the height of winter and heaters at the height of summers. How about the university takes some of that money from science and engineering departments and from athletic dept, and rips down those old pipes and makes these buildings more energy efficient? Every time I go to the library with an intent to work, I find myself walking out in anger my day having been ruined and also feeling sorry for the poor library staff who have to work there in the blistering heat and yet are not allowed to work in nude.

6. Neil Street. This street completely wears me out. Neil Street, for those of you not from Champaign, is one of the main North-South arteries in the city and a small portion of it, going through downtown, is really pleasant as it is surrounded by nice pubs, restaurants and cafes. However, the Northern part is exhausting to drive through. You pass by this giant factory on your left, which I assume is the Kraft factory, that produces this horrible acidic, metal tasting smell and makes you wonder: "Am I going to get leukemia if I spend too much time in this place?" Honestly, can you move that thing out to the outskirts of the city? There are people living here for Christ's sake!

7. The local weatherman Ed Giezer. Now, Ed and I have a love-hate thing going. As I wake up to the sounds of NPR'S Morning Edition, I actually look forward to Ed's forecast, which to be fair has been accurate most of the time. Thanks, Ed. But, can you please stop telling me what the temperature in Champaign was in 1913. Yes, I am a historian, but also if I am listening to you that means I am probably already 10 minutes late to my class, so if you could get to what the temperature will be today? I often find myself standing butt naked in my room with different kinds of clothes on my bed, waiting for ED to give me the forecast. Also, please cut the banter with our local announcer of Morning Edition (whose voices crawls under my skin), and stop laughing when you are announcing the next cold wave. It is annoying enough to have to walk out those mornings, but it becomes even more annoying if someone's laughing at you while you are doing it. But, keep up the good job Ed. Don't mean to knock on the man.

8. The local NPR programing. While I was living in Louisville I fell in love with Louisville's NPR station: morning NPR, followed by Fresh Air (a wonderful show), Tavis Smiley (so-so, but provocative with interesting guests), then my favorite the Talk of the Nation, followed by All Things Considered, the World, recap of Jim Lehrer's evening news, and then finally BBC programming. Louisville's 89.3 NPR is also the first thing that greets me as I drive over the Kennedy bridge into Downtown. To be fair, our local 580 AM NPR station does have Morning Edition, the World, All Things Considered and BBC programming (without which I cannot fall asleep, I know, I know, I need help). But whatta hell is with the 10am David Inch show that talks about insects, home improvement and other completely inappropriate things for Monday mornings! Monday mornings have to be about politics, period! On Mondays I had already been deprived of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann for two days (during MSNBC's prison obsession), so I need my political fix without having to turn on my laptop, go to the sites, dress, etc. And farmer's report. I have an immense respect for farmers whose lives are not easy, they work hard and often get very little in return. The local NPR station is as much as theirs as it is mine. But, honestly, do we need to have farmer's report--which always includes how hogs are doing on Chicago trade--at 2pm, taking the spot of The Talk of the Nation!? And David Inch really ought to get more current with his show (he is a smart man but the content of his show is like the content of Budlight, not much to taste unless you like the taste of piss).

9.Prices at Schnucks. I know, I know, I should shop at Meyer, which I do, but have to say that meat at Schnucks is so much better, their wine selection is almost always superior and on sale (just yesterday I got me some delicious Old Bycyclette wine for $7 and the bottle had been $20). Their vegetables can be hit or miss but they always have an organic section (on sale), and it is closer to my house. And, I get my gas points saving me about $10 per month. Having said that, however, the Schnucks' management randomly increases prices by such margin that in a week your grocery bill increases by like 15%. Isn't this illegal? I mean you can't just increase the price of my spinach pie dough from $3.89 to $4.89 in a day! And you can't charge $6.00 for a small box of blueberries. That's just wrong.

10. The depth of my bathtub. I love taking baths with a nice glass of wine, some candles, smooth jazz, and a nice book. And yes, I am straight. But, I have discovered that the shallowness of my bathtub just destroys the enjoyment. By the time I fill it up with water, and I lie my fat ass down in there, there is almost no room left for my snuggly bubbles which is the whole of the bath. So, I guess I will have to wait to have a bigger place with a huge bathtub.

Your turn...

Cheney: Torture Saves Lives

2009-03-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

In a continuation of my summary of Mayer's book, and venting my frustration with our former (thank God!) administration, I want to briefly address Cheney's criminal claim from this weekend that Obama is making the nation less safe by respecting the rule of law in dealing with terrorism suspects. Cheney's main argument behind his justification of Bush's war crimes is that we are dealing with a new kind of enemy who is willing to die in exacting maximum casualties. Further, he argues that there are moments when top terrorists are captured and "enhanced" interrogation might be the only way to get the information out of them about an imminent terrorist attack. In other words, torture saves lives. My answer to Cheney: bullshit!

A fascinating case which explicitly shows that torture does not work and humane interrogation does is the case of al-Midhar and Hazmi in the prelude to Sept.11th. Mayer's description of the case is corroborated by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report. After the African embassy bombings, the FBI captured a person who during an interrogation volunteered a phone number which would emerge as the main missed clue in thwarting the horrors of 9/11. The FBI immediately tapped the number which belonged to the father-in-law of Khalid al-Midhar, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers. The phone line was a goldmine: soon, the FBI was getting the voices of Bin-Laden's top lieutenants discussing a major operation. It was enough information for the FBI and CIA to warn the Bush administration that "Bin Laden prepared to strike in the US." A warning which Bush and Condi Rice brushed aside as the President was too distracted by his big speech on banning stem cell research. Reportedly Bush said to the intelligence officers: "Well, now you covered your asses" and moved on.

However, the FBI and the CIA realized that two men, al-Midhar and Hazmi were going to attend a major Al-Q meeting in Kualalumpur, Malaysia. Later, it was discovered that this was where the 9/11 plans were finalized. The intelligence services followed al-Midhar and Hazmi as they crossed Asia and ended up in Bangkok, Thailand. This is where the CIA mysteriously lost track of the men. Why? Because there was very weak cooperation between different intelligence branches in different countries. The animosity between the FBI and the CIA was reportedly so bad that FBI did not share with the CIA the information that al-Midhar and Hazmi had entered the US on multiple occasions! The fatal misstep was also due to simple human incompetency: it turned out that the rap sheets of the two would be hijackers just sat in an inbox at a CIA office for weeks before they were analyzed. The details get even more complicated and they are tracked down in the 911 commission report, but it is clear that sheer human incompetence (which is very normal given the scope of the agencies and human fallibility) and the failure to follow up on actionable intelligence (hence losing the terrorists in Bangkok) that caused the US to miss the warning signs of the horrible tragedy.

So, the intelligence goldmine--the phone number of a hijacker's father in law--was retrieved through a routine interrogation but it was the failure of human intelligence and competency not the fact that the terrorists weren't tortured enough, which caused the US intelligence services to miss the warning signs of 9/11.

I just wish one of the media "pundits," such as John King, would educate themselves about these damning details before interviewing Dick Cheney. So rather than blasting Obama for struggling to bring the rule of law back to the US, Cheney should disappear in one of his bunkers just in case someone in Obama's Justice Dept is reading Mayer's book and preparing indictments.

Anatomy of a War Crime

2009-03-16T12:34:00.001-07:00

In the past few days I have been falling asleep with a perversely fascinating book by Jane Mayer, a reporter for the New Yorker, which represents the most comprehensive biography of Bush's "war on terror." The book titled "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals," is the most detailed account (to my knowledge) of the behind-the-scenes activities of key Bush officials after September 11th in drafting the policy of torture, illegal imprisonment, and Guantanamo Bay. In short, it is a harrowing story of a war crime in the making by top US officials, including President Bush himself. There are many interesting aspects to the story but in this post I will focus on one: how did the legal infrastructure authorizing torture and indefinite imprisonment of "illegal enemy combatants" come into being following the September 11th attacks on our country.

The key officials in the Bush administration who were responsible for drafting this policy were known as the War Council and were composed of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief counsel David Addington, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, Pentagon's Legal Counsel William Haynes, and the now infamous Jon Yoo, who was at the time a deputy chief in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The self-appointed War Council was thus composed of unelected lawyers with extreme far-right legal views which had been in developing since the Watergate era. The War Council reported to Dick Cheney personally who in turn controlled the flow of information to President.

The main intellectual thrust of these right-wingers, many of whom were members of the Federalist Society, came from their deep seated conviction that in the aftermath of Nixon's Watergate shenanigans, the Congress had curtailed the power of the President way too much. The mentor of the group and Cheney's long-time confidant David Addington, who would emerge as the main brainpower of the torture policy, was a firm believer in the so-called Unitary Presidency which argued that in the time of war, the President had an unlimited authority to override basically any law he wished if he declared it to be in the interest of national security. In other words, the War Council members believed in Nixon's (in)famous credo that "if President does it, it is no longer illegal." And September 11th offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these people to put their ideas into action: to emasculate the Congress and entrust the President with literally limitless power. In short it was the mobilization of the long-forgotten absolutist credo so articulately voiced by Louis XIV: "L'etat, c'est moi!" David Addington's acerbic, ironic, and far right-wing ideology was abhorrent even to the highest officials in the Bush administration. Jane Mayer quotes one of his colleagues, who was present at many of the meetings David Addington presided over, who said: "Who let this fucking lunatic run the country." In the words of another long-term colleague, "David just didn't believe in the Constitution." The War Council also cooperated with a Mormon layer by the name of James Flannigan who lived conservatism in his everyday routine (he had 14 children!). John Yoo, who would emerge as the public face of Addington, was a former Berkley law professor whose obsession with the Unitary Presidency was intensely personal: as a son of Korean immigrants he abhorred what he saw was the Supreme Court's attempts to curtail the power of President Truman to wage the Korean War (more about this later). In short, the Council was purely ideological and it was composed of highly skilled lawyers, filling the gap in the Bush administration's cabinet which consisted of very few lawyers, in contrast to Clinton's and now Obama's cabinet(both Clinton and Obama had been constitutional law professors before becoming President).

The reason why Addington emerged as the intellectual mentor of the group is because he was a long-time confidant to Dick Cheney with whom he had participated in evacuation exercises orchestrated by the US government during the first Bush and Reagan administration, in case the executive branch was ever to be wiped out in a terrorist attack. Thus, underground bunkers and threats of a massive biological/nuclear attack had dominated both, Cheney's and Addington's thinking. Addington articulated through law what Cheney felt in his gut. It was truly a scary team.

Abrogating the Geneva Convention. Cheney's minions hated international organizations and treaties and high on the list of these was the Geneva Conventions, a series of treaties on treatment of prisoners and conducts of war which had been negotiated under the leadership of the United States in the aftermath of World War I (1929) and finally in 1949 after the horrors of the Holocaust and WWII. David Addington and Co. mocked the provisions of the Geneva Conventions which mandated that states treat all prisoners humanely on the basis of our common humanity. They argued that the heinous nature of 9/11 and the viciousness of our new enemy was nothing like we had seen before. This is why in the days after 9/11 one of the main CIA people Coffer Black said "the gloves come off." But there needed to be a legal justification for this new war and the War Council led the effort to provide such.

John Yoo and Addington argued that the Geneva Conventions were "quaint" because we were facing a new and vicious enemy. They mocked the provisions of the carefully negotiated treaties which gave prisoners of war the right to athletic exercise among other things, access to fresh air, etc. They forgot to mention that these provisions were inserted at the insistence of US negotiators and eagerly ratified by Republicans and Democrats in Congress in the aftermath of WWII. Further, the War Council argued that the Geneva Conventions did not cover combatants who were not soldiers for a state and who themselves did not recognize the rules of war. In their mind, Afghanistan was a "failed state" so the members of Al-Queada and Taliban had no rights to Geneva Protections.

According to Mayer's exhaustive investigation, which included interviews with many legal scholars including some pretty conservative ones, this reading of the Geneva Conventions was simply not true and was blatantly cynical. For example, Yoo forgot to mention that while some provisions of the Geneva Conventions gave prisoners of war the right to athletic exercise the other provisions authorized the state to execute on spot those it deemed to be spies. Further, the conventions also mandated that states convene Article 5 Tribunals at times of war during which it would weed out civilians from combatants. The US had done this even at the height of the Vietcong attacks on the US soldiers and even as recently as the Gulf War in 1991. Article 5 Tribunals had become a routine practice in the Military Code of Justice. Hence, when Bush instituted the military commissions many generals were outraged at what they saw as degradation of the venerable tradition. Finally, the Geneva conventions (in letter and spirit) included all possible categories of people including those deemed to be non-state actors, like French resistance fighters in World War II. Ironically, the argument that terrorists were not included was the same argument the Vietcong used against the Americans.

What is particularly remarkable about the whole process is that Cheney and Co. cut out of the loop everyone who did not agree with the War Council. This included Secretary of State Collin Powell and his Chief of Staff Wilkerson, Condi Rice and her lawyer Bellinger who, get this, WAS IN CHARGE OF NATIONAL SECURITY! Every time a new memo would come out justifying ignoring the Geneva Conventions or authorizing illegal wiretapping, the Powell wing of the administration (which included the State Dept) would be outraged but wasn't able to do much because this is what "the Vice President wants" many would say. It was Vice President and David Addington who had the final say on every document that reached Bush's desk. They controlled the vital flow of information to Bush and this is where the ultimate power of the executive was hidden--in the flow of information.

Interrogations. The abrogation of the Geneva Conventions was the legal justification for Bush's "enhanced" interrogation policy, which eventually came to include waterboarding, chaining the prisoner to a floor in fetal position, attacks by dogs, ramming the prisoner's head through a wall (a practice the CIA learned from Israeli intelligence), nudity, food deprivation, anal intrusion with sharp objects, and the list goes on. There are even reports by several former prisoners who claimed they were threatened to be anally raped by specially trained German shepard. In short, the Cheney Council had authorized unimaginable torture. However, Yoo devised such a narrow definition of torture which clearly violated the letter and the spirit of the Geneva Conventions. More importantly, it violated the US Convention Against Torture of 1984, making these practices multiple felonies carrying maximum prison sentences.

That this is not reporting by some wide-eyed liberal journalist is confirmed by the honorable behavior of the FBI through the whole ordeal. After Bush himself ordered the CIA, run by the cowering George Tenet, to run the interrogation policy he cut out of the process thousands of FBI interrogators who had been trained for decades in anti-terrorism strategies, including interrogations, and who had a deep experience of the Middle East, and knew the intricacies of the law regulating these practices. The latter is what made Cheney distrust the FBI so much. For example, after witnessing an interrogation of an Al-Queada operative Zubayda in Afghanistan (who according to multiple reports was rammed head first through a wall and let to bleed on a bed for days), the FBI was ordered by its director Mueller to walk out and have nothing to do with the CIA interrogations. To its great credit, the FBI would consistently try to thwart the torture methods, pointing out that the CIA and the Bush administration were not only violating the US law but possibly committing a war crime. Mayer interviews many FBI interrogators with long experience in combating terrorism and Al-Queda in particular and they all argue that torture never works, it just simply makes people tell the interrogators what they want to hear. And this is where Bush becomes personally implicated.

After one of the earliest Al-Q people al-Libi was captured in Afghanistan (and he himself admitted running a terrorist camp), FBI interrogators started questioning him (this is based on Mayer's conversation with these interrogators). At their surprise he was very talkative and told them many things about the camps, terrorist activities, plans, etc. However, under intense pressure from Cheney and Bush to link Al-Q to Iraq in the prelude to the war against Iraq, CIA took over interrogations and started torturing al-Libi after which he completely shut down. The FBI was once again completely left out of the loop. Al-Libi became the first detainee to be "outsourced" to Egyptian prisoners where he was beaten severely, held in a cage for 80 hours and urinated on by the guards. Finally he started telling very confusing stories about Saddam's links to his camps and the information was dispatched to Cheney's office and eventually to Bush. Hence, Bush used it in a Cincinnati speech in which he claimed that Saddam was developing nuclear weapons in cooperation with Al-Q. What he didn't say however is that Tenet had been warned of the dubious nature of al-Libi's confessions--an independent intelligence analysis of his testimony showed up on the intra-agency computer system and anyone working at the CIA (especially Tenet) would know about it. The information also never made it to Colin Powell who used al-Libi's confession in his infamous speech to the UN Security Council justifying the war. By 2004, the CIA itself was confirming that al-Libi's testimony was a pure fabrication. Again, this was never reported to the American people. What is most remarkable to me about this story is that Bush's use of this information in a speech shows his direct knowledge of al-Libi's interrogation and might be the clearest instance of linking him personally to torture.

Mayer's brilliant description of the creation of the war on terror leaves no doubt that serious crimes were committed not JUST by individual CIA interrogators but especially by top US officials, including Dick Cheney and George Bush. What is particularly tragic is that with this policy, the Bush administration violated an honorable tradition of the US' respect for the Geneva Conventions and the rules of war. This doesn't mean there were never aberrations but they were only that--aberrations which were condemned, and corrected, but never EVER justified in legal documents.

The lawyers of the War Council ignored the long history of American jurisprudence banning torture. George Washington himself ordered his troops in the Revolutionary War to treat British prisoners humanely despite the fact that the Brits had tortured the American "terrorists" in ways that were even then seen as inhumane. Far from being an altruistic order, George Washington was a brilliant military commander who knew degrading treatment of prisoners wreaks havoc on army morale and performance. During the American Civil War, a Columbia Law Professor drafted the "Lieber Code" which remained in force until the 20th century and mandated humane treatment of military prisoners. After both world wars, America was the leading force behind the institutionalization of anti-torture laws which it has recently so blatantly and tragically violated.

I think we should all write letters to our representatives and anyone who will listen to put pressure on the Obama administration and Congress to conduct a thorough investigation of this. I have no doubt that any criminal investigation would result in a lot of formerly high-level people going to prison for very very long time. Only then will America's honor be restored.

Gay Rights are Human Rights

2009-03-15T08:06:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration is facing another test of its commitment to human rights: whether or not to extend health insurance benefits to same-sex spouses of federal employees. The administration has to respond to a Ninth Circuit Court ruling in California which mandated the federal government to provide health insurance benefits to spouses of gay federal employees, a right that is enjoyed by millions of straight federal employees and their spouses. The Bush administration argued that this would be a violation of a federal statute as mandated by the Defense of Marriage Act passed during the Clinton Administration in 1996 (DOMA), which defined marriage as a union between man and woman, setting off a series of legal precedents which denied basic government protection against discrimination to millions of gay Americans. The Ninth Circuit court judge argued in his decision that the Defense of Marriage Act violated the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of "due process of law" and is therefore unconstitutional. The case is almost certainly going to end up in front of the Supreme Court.

This issue goes beyond health insurance--which is important enough given the scarcity and the astronomical price tag of health insurance in this country as well as the extensive health coverage the federal government offers to its employees--but goes to the heart of the American ideal that all human beings should be treated equally not on the basis of some political, social, or personal character, but by the mere fact that they are human beings and American citizens.

The main argument of the Right-wing ideologues on this issues rests on the defense of laws which for gays today are almost equivalent to what Jim Crow laws were for the African-Americans some 60 years ago. The Defense of Marriage Act was one of the most cowardly political maneuvers of Clinton who used to drive me nuts with his desire to have his cake and eat it too. It was hailed as a "compromise" by the Clinton Democrats to the far right-wing in what was an all out cultural war in the 1990s. It was at the height of the Democratic Leadership Council's cowering attempts to take off the cloak of liberalism from the party and move to what they called "centrist" position (and we saw how that served them during the ensuing 8 years of Republican dominance). The Defense of Marriage Act is a blatant discriminatory measure, passed by the Congress and signed into law by the President, that claims that millions of Americans can be legally placed outside of the law just because the government does not like their choice of partners in life. It is a slippery slope when the government starts mandating sexuality and taste, crafting discrimination in a legal language that is somehow beyond criticism. The Defense of Marriage Act needs to be repealed today.

The issue is also tangentially connected to another legacy of the Clinton Democrats: "don't ask, don't tell". The policy stated that gay military personnel can serve in the military as long as they are not openly gay; otherwise, the military can dishonorably discharge anyone who is openly gay. The way I read this policy is: you have to remain in the closet because being a homosexual is something the government finds unlawful! This policy strikes me as one of the most cynical, blatantly hateful, anti-American, and stupidest policies in the history of the Democratic Party's governance. The fact that the policy resulted from Clinton's well-intentioned desire to offer equal rights to gay Americans serving in the military is what makes the policy even more breathtakingly stupid. What started as Clinton's progressive move to protect gays in the military from being fired just on the basis of their sexual orientation turned into a fossilization of legal discrimination against gay Americans. The infamous law takes its place right next to the DOMA in a shameful cannon of discriminatory jurisprudence. The human consequences of this anti-American measure can be seen in some 12,500 lives of soldiers who have been fired from the military for being openly gay and whose careers have been ruined.

Obama's opposition to gay marriage is still completely baffling to me. He opposes it on the basis of an antiquarian Biblical definition of an institution which is not religious, but secular and therefore, state-sponsored. Nobody is mandating that Churches preform gay marriage, but at the same time, nobody should mandate that the Churches should tell the state how to regulate its own institution. We have been through this discussion already and it was called the Enlightenment!

However, I am encouraged by Obama's strong, consistent, and genuine support for gay rights which seem to be a cleverly devised policy to make the polarizing debate over marriage moot (by giving gay Americans all the right "married" Americans enjoy but without the name). While in the Senate Obama supported repealing the DOMA, "don't ask, don't tell," as well as the extension of benefits to gay couples, including health insurance, hospital visitation rights, etc. What is even more encouraging is that during his campaign he openly supported the same policies and since becoming President has appointed openly gay Americans to some key posts, including the influential Director of Personnel office John Berry.

But now is also the time for Obama has to step up, issue an executive order, creating a commission composed of legal scholars and gay activists to study a complete overhaul in the government's position towards gay Americans. He also needs to work with Pelosi and Reid in getting them to repeal the DOMA and with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in repealing "don't ask, don't tell." There are already more encouraging signs: the wanna-be Democrat and former Republican Joe Liebermann is sponsoring a resolution to repeal the DOMA. At the same time, the public opinion as well as the opinion of many military personnel is on the Obama side so he should have no problem in ignoring and shaming the Republican right-wingers, such as Tony Perkins and CO., whose shrillness and obsession with this issues raises some serious questions about their own sexuality.

I am confident Obama will do the right thing in this case.

Obama's Guantanamo Disappointment

2009-03-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a major chance for the Obama administration to break forever with the criminal policies of George W. Bush who, I still insist, one day may be charged with war crimes in front of the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague. Yesterday was a deadline for the Obama Justice Department to file a response to some 40 habeas corpus challenges of Guantanamo inmates, challenging their detention, on the basis that the US government had no authority under international law to hold them indefinitely. At the heart of the habeas corpus challenge was a Bush-era construction which granted the President exclusive authority to hold someone just on the basis that they "supported" Al Queda or Taliban no matter how tangentially they were connected. Rather than being just a case of legal semantics the fate of over 241 men still held at the concentration camp hung in balance.

And how did Obama do yesterday? He disappointed all of us who believe in the ideals of America, the rule of law, and international justice. In an under-reported statement, Eric Holder, our current Attorney General, claimed that the US government still had the authority to hold these individuals indefinitely on the basis of their "support" for Al Queda and without having to charge them. Dropping the name "enemy combatant" from the government justification and arguing that the power comes not from the President, but from the Congress, is nothing but a pure semantic exercise designed to make it seem like Obama was breaking with Bush while at the same time adopting the basis of his illegal policy in the so-called "war on terror."

Steven Engel, who was a senior lawyer in the Justice Dept in charge of detainee policy, said that "this seems fundamentally consistent with the positions of the prior administration." Eric Holder's Justice Dept lawyers also inserted the word "substantially" in front of "support" of terrorists to make is seem that they are more meticulous in their legal justification. What is simply breathtakingly disappointing is that Holder argued that these policies are somehow rooted in International Law! This is exactly what Bush had argued! And it is exactly why his appearance in front of the ICC in the Hague seems a possibility (however remote) in the future. Just because there was one case of "enemy combatant" after WWII, this does not give the US the right to hold individuals in detention indefinitely without bringing charges just because the President, the Congress, or God himself said so. This is illegal! Period!

I understand that there are so many legal complexities in these cases and that some, if not many, of these individuals might be dangerous to the security of our nation. But to violate our very basic ideals is to be defeated by the enemy who holds himself to no such standard. We live in a democracy, a society ruled by law which, while imperfect and full of loopholes, is the best thing we could have come up with in the past 200 years. To throw this whole network of laws into disarray on the basis of the current (and temporary) threat to our national security is to admit defeat by exposing the fragility of our democracy and the hypocrisy of our values.

President Obama has shown immense boldness in dealing with a lot of issues and has began to implement many of his campaign promises. His policies, as I wrote in earlier posts, have led to real improvement in the life of prisoners like al-Marri. Ending the Guantanamo shame, however, remains a promise yet to be fulfilled. And he will be held accountable now that he has taken ownership of this legacy stained with war crimes.

As a constitutional lawyer I am sure that Obama is aware of former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis' famous creed that "the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." President Obama should laminate this quote and put it above his desk in the Oval Office.

Karl Marx was right

2009-03-12T14:11:00.000-07:00

"Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society" ("The Communist Manifesto" p.41, Modern edition, 1998).

Karl Marx wrote this almost two hundred years ago at a time when capitalism was cocky in its self-confidence and reading it today he seems to be talking about our current recession/depression. The first burst of the Industrial Revolution refashioned the way Western Europeans lived, pushing small peasants off their land and into the filthy cities, enriching the formerly petit-bourgeois merchants, and causing a massive explosion in urban space throughout Europe. Even the kings seemed emasculated under the crushing flow of capital which seemed to laugh in the face of nation-states. The bourgeoisie seemed to have conquered the world once and for all.

Not so fast, Marx said. The brilliance of Marx as an economist--and a founder of modern economics--is his ability to see beyond the temporary triumph of capitalism and tease out the inherent contradictions within capitalism itself. Built on glorification of greed, Marx argues, capitalism by its very nature has to continuously expand in search of new markets. The Europeans would come out of the first wave of Industrial Revolution poised to take on the whole world. It would be Lenin in the beginning of the 20th century who would take Marx further by seeing European imperialism (and the ensuing Scramble for Africa) as an inevitable and quite logical phase of capitalism. The accumulation of wealth is the very engine of capitalist growth and it would be this engine that would drive the bourgeoisie to span the globe from the expanding capitals of Europe, conquering almost every patch of land mass. The British Empire alone "owned" 1/3 of global land mass by the end of the 19th century. Capitalism needed imperialism not in order to expand for the expansion's sake, but in order to survive.

And what about the crisis today? The greed of Wall Street investors, bankers, and individual home owners pushed everyone to make immensely risky bets, endowing everyone with the irrational belief that markets will just keep growing no matter how inflated the prices were. "That's simply how you make money," the financial "expert" Jim Cramer said repeatedly, imploring investors to buy Bear Stearn stock only a few days before it plummeted. The tragic thing about this mess is that this was not some Bernie Madoff-like conspiracy by CNBC and the Wall Street to dupe the investors. The mad accumulation of capital was a very logical goal that most investors developed observing the ever-expanding markets during the boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. This is why today's so-called financial experts are so limited in their "expertise." They completely give in to the temporary orgasmic pleasures of wealth without seeing beyond the current moment and analyzing the underlying processes making them rich: for example, why the housing prices had become so inflated. No, they did not care. As Cramer so bluntly put it: "this is how you make money." And today's millions of jobs lost, peoples' savings wiped out, European banking system on a verge of collapse? All of this is the inevitable price of making money.

And Marx realized this even before capitalism had a chance to go through constant commercial crises. Marx's prediction of an impending revolution in Western Europe might have been more wishful thinking, influenced by the enthusiasm of the 1848 Revolutions, and his vague ideas of communist society left room for some of the most horrific regimes of the 20th century (such as Stalin, or USSSR's domination of E.Europe). But his brilliance as an economist cannot be disputed. The Communist Manifesto should be a required reading in every Econ 101 class. Maybe then capitalism could become more self-reflective, mindful of the limits of greed.

The Right to Castration

2009-03-11T08:22:00.001-07:00

This morning's NYT is reporting on a fascinating debate in Europe echoing through chambers of the European Parliament, Council of Europe, the media, and millions of European households. At the center of the debate is the following question: should European courts mandate, allow, or prohibit the increasing practice of castration for repeated sex offenders. The Council of Europe's anti-torture committee has argued that this constitutes a cruel punishment which takes away the human right to reproduce from sex offenders. The opponents of the practice argue that sex offenders should be locked up, treated, monitored, but that state's flirtation with biological remedies to a social problem leads to the dangerous path towards eugenics. The proponents of the practice point to a Danish study of 900 sex offenders in the 1960s which showed that a rate of repeat offense after castration dropped from 80 to 2%. They also point to testimonies of (former) sex offenders themselves who after being castrated say with relief that they can finally lead happy lives no longer a threat to society.

Czech Republic has offered the procedure although hospitals point out that it is a very rare form of medical practice which is always safe and painless. After some pretty gruesome murders of children by pedophiles, Poland is also preparing legislation which would allow the courts to impose hormone-blocking drugs on repeated sex offenders.

It might surprise you that despite my decidedly liberal convictions, I am supportive of the voluntary castration measures. To allow castration is in itself a liberal value. If Europe is a haven of liberalism, it will allow the procedure to continue and even increase if that is what sex offenders desire. If the state mandated the procedure it would ignore the lack of public consensus on the issue. It is pretty clear that European public(s) are divided on this issue so for any state to take an interventionist role in this would be unethical and unconstitutional. The argument that the state has the obligation to protect the society from sex offenders does not apply here since the state already has a wide range of tools available (prison, home monitoring, psychiatric treatments, etc) to carry out this obligation. But to mandate this would be to overstep the boundaries and take a position in a public debate which has not been resolved. On the other hand, for the state to prohibit the procedure would be as equally unethical since it would once again, ignore the lack of consensus. Prohibiting or mandating castration would be tantamount to prohibiting or mandating abortion. The main reason I am vehemently pro-choice is because there is no societal consensus (is a fetus a human being, does woman have sovereignty over her womb,etc) on the issue so the choice has to be left to the individual.

It is the same case with sex offenders. They may have committed horrendous crimes and for this the state has a complete authority to take away their freedom by putting them in prisons for long time, mandating that they undergo lifelong psychiatric treatment, or monitoring their lives (or all of the above). But it is equally clear that the state has no mandate to impose biological solutions to this problem. On the other hand, if the individual sex offender voluntarily submits to the procedure, the state has no right to deny this to him/her just like it has no right to deny a terminally ill person to end their life or a woman to have an abortion.

Why David Brooks Just Doesn't Get It

2009-03-10T20:11:00.000-07:00

In his column this morning, David Brooks, the voice of the so-called "moderate" Republicans (an oxymoron if ever there was one) criticizes the worryingly manic knee-jerk reactions of the Republicans to Obama's evolving plan to deal with the economic crisis. He opens the column promisingly by arguing that while "the Democratic response to the economic crisis has its problems, ...lets face it, the current Republican response is totally misguided." He usefully scolds the non-leadership of John Boehner whose call for a spending freeze at a time of a tsunami-like economic meltdown is so childlike that you would think he was receiving daily talking points from Jonathan Krohn (see my earlier post). Brooks also criticizes the cynically moronic pseudo populism of McCain and Co. in calling for Obama to allow banks, including AIG, to fail. We did that with Lehman brothers, remember? And what did that do? It only caused the entire European banking system to come to a grinding halt, throwing Iceland into the abyss of bankruptcy and causing a near revolution in Ukraine. In any case, David Brooks urges the Republicans to step up to the podium and accept Obama's necessary intervention in the economy while offering constructive criticism to the Democrats.

In particular, David is highly critical of Obama's multifaceted approach to the crisis that involves dealing with health care, education, and energy policy reform at the same time he is trying to stimulate the economy, help the unemployed, and save the banking system from a total meltdown. He urges his fellow Republicans to point out that instead of putting out the fire to our collective home, Obama and the Democrats are redecorating the house. The core of David Brooks' argument against the Democrats is summarized by this statement:"Democrats apparently think that dealing with the crisis is a part-time job, which leaves the afternoons free to work on long-range plans to reform education, health care, energy, and a dozen small things."

The column shows that after all these years of being wrong--on Iraq, George Bush, WMD, Iran, the election--David Brooks still does not get it! Period. He is either analytically challenged, blinded by his ideology or both. The whole point of Obama's aggressive effort to tackle these "long-term" issues IS to fix the economy. Health care reform is as inseparable from economic recovery as the fixing of the banking system is from thawing the credit markets.

It is a fact (you know the thing that is always so uncomfortable for right-wing ideologues) that health care costs have seriously crippled our economy and our way of life. A health care research institute projected that health care costs for 2006 in the US surpassed 2 trillion dollars. That is more than our current deficit and it is three times the cost of health care in 1990. Rising premiums are crippling not only the government--whose Medicaid and Medicare programs are draining state and federal budgets--but also employers and individuals. Thus, GM (the automotive giant we are so desperately trying to save) has announced a whopping $5 billion in yearly health care payments to its workers. How in the world can GM afford to pay $5 billion after losing $20 billion in one year!? The health care costs are wreaking daily havoc on millions of families throughout this country. Besides the 40 million Americans without health insurance, the recession is seriously weakening the lifestyle of even those who are insured by their employer. On May 4, 2008 NYT reported that skyrocketing premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger deductibles were draining families' paychecks. For example, a man working for a local utility company in Tuscon, AZ reported that he had to pay $4,000 for his family's annual doctor's visit on top of $1600 per year in premiums. For those many Republicans who seem incapable of basic algebra, this totals almost $6000 per year, per middle-class family!

Instead of robotically repeating tax cuts and making an embarrassment of themselves maybe David Brooks and his colleagues ought to pick up an Algebra 101 book and educate themselves before speaking publicly and wasting everyone's time.

What Jonathan Krohn means for the Republican Party

2009-03-09T06:39:00.000-07:00

There is one silver (or golden I should say) lining to the economic meltdown: it has ripped through the Republican party like a tornado, leaving Republican ideologues sitting in the shell of their former home on the only piece of furniture that has survived the storm, lamenting their faith. And this is where Jonathan Krohn comes in. He is seen as the new voice of the Republican party. Someone with fresh ideas and a natural charisma that can counter the overwhelming juggernaut that is Obama's now historic personality. Even the populist spokesman for the Republican Party "Joe the Plumber" was giddy after he had a chance to shake the savior's hand at CPAC, the annual Conservative gathering in D.C. It was at the CPAC that Jonathan vowed the Republican activists with a rousing speech re-affirming the conservative principles of the GOP reassuring them that Obama's victory was short-lived and that once again, the party would find itself back in the golden years of Ronald Reagan. The messiah of the Conservative radio Bill Bennett, and Reagan's former foot soldier, has since accepted daily calls from Jonathan into his radio show giving him a daily soap box from which he could deliver the agenda which would save the Republicans from a complete annihilation in 2010. So, should the Democrats be worried? Is a Republican comeback behind the corner? Not so much.

It turns out that Jonathan Krohn is 14 years old! When he is not being scolded by his suburban, van-driving mother (this is true--I mean you can't make this stuff up!), the 14 year old Jonathan wakes up every morning at 6am to the tune of Bill Bennett's soothing voice reassured that he lives in America. He wants the Republican Party to hold tightly onto its conservative roots: low taxes (or no taxes at all), small government, and.....low taxes. Oh, I forgot one more Republican credo: low taxes. When he is not writing his homework Jonathan is in the back of his mother's van talking to conservative radio hosts throughout the country while his mother scolds him not to be too abrasive. He even appeared on Fox and Friends, the daily morning antidote to pretentious liberal intellectual snobbery. His electrifying speech at CPAC brought, dare we say, HOPE, to the Republicans that "Yes they Can" prevent their country from being taken down the path of socialism. And Jonathan Krohn would play an integral role in this resurgence.

My giddiness at the implosion within the Republican Party is tempered by the fact that I do wish that we had a healthy opposition party, an essential ingredient in every democracy. I am afraid that with the GOP forever in exile, the Dems in Congress might get too cocky and Obama might lose the self-reflectedness that is one of his most appealing characteristics. The fact is, we need the Republicans.

My giddiness truly dissipates when I look at our economic situation: 4.4 million jobs lost since September with the monthly rate of 600,000 jobs gone (most of these are not coming back). The most pessimistic unemployment projection of 8% for the entire year has been already surpassed (it's 8.1% now) and we are only in March! The GM will almost certainly file for bankruptcy and Chapter 11 would be good news since the other kind of bankruptcy--Chapter 7--would mean liquidation (i.e. probably additional million jobs lost in a matter of days!) What is particularly worrying is that the banking system is not only NOT getting better, but it on the precipice of a complete meltdown which would make the Great Depression look like the economic boom of the Clinton years. The insurance giant AIG is begging for billions more of that TARP money in preventing its collapse which would almost certainly wipe out the pension plans of millions of Americans. In short, we are in deep, deep trouble. Economists from all sides of the political spectrum, Paul Krugman as well as the US Chamber of Commerce, believe that Obama's stimulus plan, get this, was not big enough. The stimulus' honest promise that it would create 3.5-4 million new jobs is being drowned by these numbers and panicked Americans who are literally seeing their life savings wiped out overnight as DOW plunges to the low 6000s (we were hoping 9000s would be the bottom!)

In response to the crisis Obama has assembled the country's leading economists, passed an ambitious stimulus plan, an intelligent housing program to reverse foreclosures, and is preparing to roll out a plan that would save the banking system. Britain is leading Europe's intervention as its Prime Minister Gordon Brown puts his economics' PhD to work.

And what are the Republicans doing? I mean, besides getting their daily orgasm through Rush Limbaugh (sorry for the mental picture). They are trying to loosen up gun laws in D.C.! Yes, you read it correctly. Backed by the NRA gangsters, the Republicans in both, the Senate and the House have added an amendment to the Voting Rights Bill that would give House Representatives to the District of Columbia. The price of Republicans' support: stripping any remaining gun control legislation from the Districts' laws blatantly thumbing their nose at the District's horrendous homicide rate (134% of the nation's). The bill is stalled in the House but this does not excuse the Democrats in the Senate who voted for this awful bill fearful of the NRA gangsters. The remaining gun laws in D.C. are still the strictest in the nation despite the awful Supreme Court decision in 2008 (District of Columbia vs. Heller) which declared unconstitutional the District's 1976 law which outlawed all handguns.

Maybe we can call Jonathan Krohn for advice? He might be busy these days so you might want to leave a message with his secretary, um, I mean his mother.

Legalizing dictatorship

2009-03-07T07:08:00.001-08:00

I became nauseous the other day when our new Attorney General Eric Holder made public 9 memos from the Justice Department of Bush years. The publication of these memos is in the spirit of Obama's promise of transparency and I was thrilled to see that Obama was carrying out yet another fulfillment of his campaign promises. But the content of the memos is what truly made me sick to my stomach.

The memos, written in the aftermath of 9/11, are legal opinions by Justice Department legal counsels from the Bush era, including the affably smiling but inherently evil John Yoo from Georgetown Law School, on the extent of Presidential powers in time of war. The lawyers argue that the President has exclusive authority to detain any American citizen he deems to be an enemy combatant, hold him indefinitely incommunicado wherehever he wants, apply whatever interrogation techniques he wants, and is not legally obligated to ever charge him with anything. Taking our country further into Kafkaesque and Orwellian abyss, the "legal experts" portrayed the Congress as an emasculated waste of space by arguing that it had no power whatsoever to check the powers of the executive. In the scariest memo of all, Yoo and Co. argued that the President had a sole authority to order the military to attack any part of the United States if there was an imminent terrorist attack. And who decides if there was an imminent terrorist attack? The President, sorry the King, of course!

The argument that we hear from the ever shrinking Right these days that these memos are simply a product of the government experts' fears in the aftermath of 9/11 is so childish and intellectually handicapped that it does not merit a comment. However, since it is the only argument the Right ever uses to justify Bush's destruction of our beloved Constitution, it has to be addressed. The whole point of the Constitution and the immense body of laws, the networks of legal checks and balances between our branches, and a whole scholarship of legal precedence, is to address potential (and often real) scenarios in which the security of our country might be jeapordized. The laws are made to address the situations in which ethical and moral choices are ambiguous, making government officials tempted more than ever to violate those laws for the sake of political expediency. Which is exactly what the Bush administration did. Acting in a knee jerk reaction and with immaturity that is simply breathtaking, these "legal scholars" violated the most sacred principles of not just ours, but of any democracy: the rule of law. The law is sophisticated enough to address the ethically ambiguous scenarios. And to claim otherwise shows blatantly cynical belief on the part of the Bush officials that democracy is just another political tool to be welded when necessary, but abandoned when inconvenient.

The so-called "moderate center" of our political spectrum has resisted the calls for a thorough criminal investigation of Bush officials arguing that this would be politically costly and polarizing. Again, democracy and the rule of law are sacrificed for the sake of political expediency. What is even more disturbing is that this argument completely ignores the real harm these violations of our Constitution have done to real human beings. And let me briefly mention one case, which made me so angry that I had to take a walk around the block of my house in order to calm down.

Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, writing in the Feb 23 issue, has done a remarkable job on reporting on the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari man who arrived in Peoria, IL on Sept 10, 2001 with his wife and his wife children. He supposedly arrived to study at a small university in Peoria, but the government later claimed that he was an integral part of the horrible 9/11 attacks, but was thwarted by his arrest by the FBI. The FBI conducted a thorough investigation and was preparing to bring charges against him on wire fraud, credit card fraud, all of which could have resulted in a long imprisonment. However, in the summer of 2003 as the FBI agents were preparing to indict him, the military, at the explicit order of George Bush, entered the prison cell and dragged him away at the bewilderment of the FBI agents who were furious at what they saw as a kidnapping of their suspect. It turned out that Bush had declared al-Marri to be an enemy combatant and ordered the military to detain him at a South Carolina army brig where he has been ever since.

The conditions in which he was kept have been horrible and the reports of his treatment have been confirmed by the military. For the first six months he was kept in an eight foot by ten foot cell with one blacked-out window, no social contact with anyone, no reading materials. An internal report shows that the guards were often ordered to take away his mattress, pillow and the Koran for his supposed misbehavior. Further, he was denied socks, hot food and had to sleep with the stiff "anti-suicide" blanket. Soon he started hallucinating, reporting "tingles" over his body, and became fearful that the government had installed microphones in his cell. In short, the man was going crazy. No charges were ever filed, he never saw a judge and was never told how long he would be imprisoned or why he had been imprisoned. But this is not where it ends. It gets worse.

As he became madder by the day, al-Marri became less cooperative and the guards "got rougher" chaining him to the floor in a fetal position, wrapping duct tape over his mouth, gagging him, and once, they tried to tape a sock in his mouth but when he started chocking they panicked, and stopped.

Al-Marri's treatment is a war crime. It constitutes the violation of United Nations Convention against Torture, the Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 3rd and 4th Geneva Convention. Since the U.S. is a signatory (and a founding member) of all of these treaties, it is obligated by law not only to uphold them, but to prosecute those who violate them. The breathtaking scope of the violations in al-Marri's case is so huge that it actually might constitute not only a war crime, but a crime against humanity, which gives jurisdiction to International Criminal Court in the Hague. The ICC could thus legally issue arrest warrants for any official, including the head of state (as they just did in the case of Sudan).

I would like to conclude on a more optimistic note. Obama's victory has led to serious improvements in al-Marri's treatment: he has plenty of reading materials, watches TV (and has become a fan of Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert). In a weird twist to the whole story, the guards at the prison had bought him a huge screen TV for his cell and now he has a whole "suite" floor to himself. This also might be a way to ease al-Marri to not testify to the horrors in the prison. What is more remarkable is that he has remained sane: he followed Obama's campaign avidly, jokes with the guards, and only demands that he be tried, not released.

And that is exactly what Obama is doing. Just the other day, Obama announced that al-Marri would be transferred to the civilian custody and tried in a criminal court under the original FBI indictment. I have no idea if al-Marri is guilty of anything but as an American citizen I am truly appalled as to what my government has done to this person. So is the FBI. They are so angry that there were serious feuds between them and Bush's officials over what they saw as kidnapping of their suspect. And the Bush administration failed to charge him with anything while the FBI only in a year or so was getting ready to charge him with a bunch of charges.

Kudos to Obama for reversing the legal dictatorship of the Bush years. But this should be only the beginning. Those who violated our Constitution and possibly committed war crimes and crimes against humanity need to be held accountable just like other states have been forced to hold their leaders accountable (Milosevic).

Keith Olbermann's Moving Denunciation of Prop.8

2008-11-11T11:07:00.001-08:00

America's New Face

2008-11-05T12:34:00.000-08:00

AMERICA AT ITS BEST!!!!!

2008-11-04T21:08:00.000-08:00

VICTORY!!!!!!

The Day of Decision: Predictions and Worries

2008-11-02T08:46:00.001-08:00

After more than 4 years of following the remarkable and inspiring ascent of Barack Obama from an eloquent orator at the 2004 Democratic National convention to an almost President-elect of the United States, I am hopeful. I am hopeful that on November 4 America will have changed its face in a matter of hours. We have no idea what kind of president Barack Obama will actually be. But from what we have seen in this campaign we know that we will finally have a president who looks at the world through the prism of his own complicated background. As a result, he is a man inspired not only by raw political ambition, but also by intellectual curiosity. This curiosity and his balanced character can potentially make him into a great president who changes the direction of our country in bold ways. He would be a new face of America in the world: a kinder, a more hopeful face. Without further ado, here are some things to watch out for in the early hours of the election night, followed by predictions by some of the most prominent election pundits.

The early returns will tell us a lot about the outcome. If Indiana is too early too call by 8pm, it might be a very close election. This will mean that the turnout of African-Americans and newly energized Obama voters in Indiana will probably not have tipped this red state into a blue state. If, on the other hand, Indiana is called early for Obama, it will be a landslide. McCain has no chance of catching up. In the same vein, if Virginia is called for Obama by a comfortable margin this means that many rural voters in southwestern Virginia will have gone Obama's way and this might be the trend in other battleground states. If Virginia goes to Obama in a big way, that means the polls have been correct and we can expect the western states of COlorado, Nevada, New Mexico all to go to him putting him way above 300 electoral votes and up to 7% in popular vote. This, indeed, would be a landslide. The most comforting thing to me on the eve of this momentous election is the fact that Obama has multiple paths to victory. For example, Obama can lose both Ohio and Florida if he keeps all Kerry states, gets Iowa (which is he almost certain to do), Virginia, Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico (281 electoral votes).

The thing that really worries me and makes me nauseous is the number of undecideds in almost all of the battleground states. In this morning's Mason-Dixon poll, in all of the states, Obama is up by a very small margin, but the number of undecideds way outnumber this margin. And guess what? Almost all of the undecideds are white. Some pollsters are convinced that these are whites who are uncomfortable with voting for a black candidate and they are "hiding" in the undecided category. If this is true, the question is: will most of them stay at home, or will they mostly break for McCain. If they break for McCain, we are in for an extremely devastating evening. An evening which will probably require a heavy does of anti-depressants and anxiety medication for months to come.

With this in mind, I turn to pundits who, even though God knows have been wrong, but have been in the business of elections and making predictions for decades. I am outlining their predictions below to comfort us and make us get to Nov.4 without getting an ulcer. The predictions include the electoral number for Obama and the number of seats Democrats are bound to pick up in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

George Will, conservative columnist:
Obama: 378 electoral votes (a huge landslide)
Senate: +7 Democrats
House: +21 Democrats

Matthew Dowd, former Bush pollster-turn Obama supporter:

Obama: 338 electoral votes (7% in popular vote)
Senate: +8 Democrats
House: +17 Democrats

Mark Halperin, Time Magazine writer
Obama: 349
Senate: +7 Democrats
House: +28 Democrats

Donna Braziller, Democratic strategiest
Obama: 343 Obama
Senate: +8 Democrats
House: +29 Democrats

George Stephanapholus, host of "This Week."
Obama: 353
Senate: +7 Democrats
House: +28 Democrats

So, every pundit predicts a landslide for Obama reaching well into the 300s, something unknown for Democrats. Also if Democrats manage to get 9 seats in the Senate, they will have a filibuster-proof majority in the Congress and can pass Obama's legislation with ease and truly change the direction of this country. But I am doubtful if they can achieve this. Watch the Kentucky Senate race: if the very popular Republican incumbent Mitch McConnell loses in Kentucky, it will be a Democratic sweep. This is why early returns from Indiana and Kentucky are so important.

Let this be my last post before the big day. The next post will either be titled: "VICTORY: AMERICA AT ITS BEST," or "AN IRREVOCABLE TRAGEDY."

Tonight

2008-10-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

The only thing Obama has to do tonight is to make coherent statements, stay calm, and talk about issues. McCain will do the most damage to himself without Obama having to dirty his hands. If Obama does as well as he has done in the previous two debates and almost every public performance, he has this thing in the bag.

At an Obama Rally

2008-10-12T07:08:00.001-07:00

I knew I arrived at the location when I encountered a young African-American man selling Obama t-shirts, buttons, hats. He was standing in front of a line that stretched for what it seemed like several miles. The line waiting to get into the Observatory Field in Cincinnati's Old Park mirrored the diversity of America: white, black, brown, Asian, young, old, middle-aged. An African-American boy was sitting on the grass near the line with his laptop doing what it seemed was his math homework. A woman in front of me was reading "A Brave New World." What was fascinating about the gathering was the energy: everyone was laughing, talking lively, cars passing by were honking their horns, and several middle-aged women broke out in a dance.

My brother and I arrived about two hours before the door opened and we were still way behind. When the door finally opened, people rushed, some running, to take the front seats. The day was absolutely beautiful. We waited in the huge field for what it seemed like an eternity, but was about 2 more hours before Barack Obama took the stage.

The noise of the crowd was deafening and a woman next to me kept shouting: "Oh my God, there he is." I realize that this man has almost a cult-like following. This is a movement. Not a political party. And it is this energy that made me convinced that he would be elected.

He seems much smaller in size than he appears on TV. He is tall, but his small shoulders and thin physique give him a non-intimidating posture. When he speaks he always looks around the whole circumference of the stadium making you think he always is looking your way. The aura of self-confidence and intense determination are almost visible around him as he speaks. He is aware of the power of his words: he waits for the words to reach you before moving on. His posture "as if always posing for a coin" (to quote Jon Stewart) reflects his intense concentration, but also the fiery ambition.

I think what is really inspiring about this man is not only his rhetoric, but his steely self-discipline, unwavering determination, and his seeming ability at social perception. While he speaks you feel like he is talking directly to you. While watching him speak I felt the power of mass politics to mobilize your emotions and make you personally invested in the political fate of the candidate.

David Brooks on Barack Obama

2008-10-08T16:16:00.000-07:00

David Brooks has been considered one of the intellectuals behind the mainstream conservative movement in the US. This is the wing of the Republican party that has become fed up with the Religious Right's hijacking of that party, which to a large extent is to blame for the Republicans' diminishing prospects. As I said in my previous posts, I rarely agree with Brooks on anything, but the man at least makes coherent arguments and insights that engage even those who disagree.

On Monday, David Brooks gave an interview to the Atlantic Monthly in which he, to his great credit, lashed out at the ugliness of the Palin phenomenon that has dragged the Republicans--and everyone else with them--into the mud. Describing Sarah Palin as a "fatal cancer to the Republican Party" Brooks lamented the anti-intellectualism of today's Republicanism that has been embodied by 8 years of George Bush. Nostalgically remembering the time when even conservatives cherished learning and engaging with ideas, Brooks admits that both Palin and Bush, and those in their wing of the party, seem to despise ideas in their entirety. He shows considerable intellectual honesty when he admits that Sarah Palin is "absolutely" not qualified to be President.

The most interesting part of the interview is David Brooks' story of his encounters with Barack Obama. His observations, I think, show why Barack Obama is such a fascinating figure. I quote David Brooks at length:

"Obama has the great intellect. I was interviewing Obama a couple years ago, and I'm getting nowhere with the interview, it's late in the night, he's on the phone, walking off the Senate floor, he's cranky. Out of the blue I say, 'Ever read a guy named Reinhold Niebuhr?' And he says, 'Yeah.' So i say, 'What did Niebuhr mean to you?' For the next 20 minutes, he gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought, which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea that you have to use power while it corrupts you. And I was dazzled, I felt the tingle up my knee as Chris Matthews would say.

And the other thing that does separate Obama from just a pure intellectual: he has tremendous powers of social perception. And this is why he's a politician, not an academic. A couple of years ago, I was writing columns attacking the Republican congress for spending too much money. And I throw in a few sentences attacking the Democrats to make myself feel better. And one morning I get an email from Obama saying, 'David, if you wanna attack us, fine, but you're only throwing in those sentences to make yourself feel better.' And it was a perfect description of what was going through my mind. And everybody who knows Obama all have these stories to tell about his capacity for social perception."

Republicans Blame the Minorities

2008-10-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

Every time I tell myself that nothing that comes from the Right can shock me anymore, the Republicans prove me wrong. Just when I thought that Palin-McCidiot smear fest has climaxed with not-so-subtle racist insults hurled at Obama, the Republicans came up with another strategy of deflecting the public's attention away from their culpability in getting us into this mess: blame the minorities.

The Republican attack on Fannie Maie and Freedie Mac's loaning practices are based on the premise that the main culprits behind the financial mess are the minorities, in particular the African-Americans who received mortgages they could not finance. The Republicans then tie the Democrats to the mortgage giants' lobbyists in arguing that it is the Democrats who are to blame for the mess.

First, there is no doubt that many people got in over their heads with the mortgages they could not afford. However, let us remember that they were roped into these deals by banks and mortgage companies who promised to keep their monthly payments low, betting on the continuing bubbling of their home prices. Let us also remember that the very core of the American identity, especially in the post WWII period, is tied to the ownership of home. Most Americans grow up with the notion that owning a home is equivalent to achieving "the American dream." Anything less than that makes you unsuccessful. So, to blame families--many of whom came from very under-privileged backgrounds--for wanting a piece of this dream at a time when the economy seemed to be doing great for everyone, is beyond moral reprehensibility. And to blame the Democrats' plans to make housing more available to the under-privileged and expand the middle class goes to show the extent to which the Republicans will go in keeping the "American dream" accessible only to the white, middle-class cream of America. According to this ideology, to make the American dream accessible to more Americans leads to nothing less than a Stock market crash.

It seems to me that the ripple effect of the mortgage mess is due not only to these bad mortgage loans, but to 1) the falling value of homes due to the previous over-speculation of home prices; and 2) the ability of banks to sell these mortgages to Wall Street and Wall Street's greedy repackaging of these toxic mortgages into bundles that were passed on further down the line, infecting the whole of the American and even most of the world's economy.

So it is the lack of regulation, which allowed for the tearing down of the walls between the different sectors of our economy--such as the banks and the Wall Street--and the dishonesty of banks in issuing mortgages that played a huge part in causing the implosion of the world's financial system. The tightening of credit throughout the market was a rational consequence of this implosion as every market player starts hoarding capital and becomes schizophrenic about giving loans to anyone out of fear that everyone's capital has become infected with these toxic assets.

So for the Sean Hannity-type of Republicans to blame the minorities, and implicitly the African-Americans, is nothing but another racist ploy to desperately cling to the White House by scaring the white voters into voting for McCain because "that one" (as McCain himself referred to Obama last night) is too risky (and gasp, too black). Despicable.

Palin's Campaign Turns into Media Witchunt

2008-10-07T11:19:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin has announced that she has a solution to the worst economic crisis to hit America and the world in the past 70 years. She will "put on her heels and take off her gloves" and attack Obama's character, doggone it! And if anyone in the media has anything to say about it, they are just East Coast elitists.

Sarah Palin's childish behavior would be funny had it not been so tragic for our country. Her rallies are turning into witch-hunts against those who dare criticize her. What's even scarier is that the racists who attend her rallies are becoming increasingly vocal. In his editorial this morning, Washington Post journalist Dana Milbank, a veteran journalist with a great reputation, reports that at her latest rally in Clearwater, Palin's routine attacks "have begun to spill into ugliness." As she lambasted Katie Couric and the mainstream media for exposing her utter ignorance and stupidity, the crowd of about 3000 descended upon the press tent, shouting abuse epithets, "waving thunder sticks!" A man in the crowd turned to an African-American sound man and shouted: "Sit down, boy!"

Considering Palin's associations with a church with a witchdoctor for a pastor, it really should not surprise anyone the type of crowds this chauvinistic thug draws. It is up to us the liberals, the media, as well as the conservatives who care about this country too much to let it be taken over by racist idiots, to shout her down and let reason prevail in November.

The Day McCain campaign Became Criminal

2008-10-06T18:05:00.000-07:00

Today should be remembered as the day when McCain lost any remaining shred of decency and threw himself into a pool of utter vileness and became just another common criminal.

At a rally, McCain consistently asserted that Barack is "unknown" to the American people despite having written two memoirs, and having run a 17-month long campaign during which his whole life was displayed publicly (as it should be). The most disturbing part of the rally was when McCain asked the question: "Who is the real Barack Obama" and someone from the audience shouted "A terrorist!" We all know that the intellectual level of McCain supporters is that of a 5 year old with a slight mental retardation, but rather than stepping in and saying "That's out of line, sir..." McCain contorted his disfigured face into a smirk and carried on.

If you thought that this was the climax of this sad day for America, you were wrong. At another rally, being held at the same time, Sarah Palin was throwing the kitchen sink at Obama, trying to associate him with a man who was engaged in despicable acts when Obama was 8 years old and who served with Obama on two charity boards where many conservatives served. She said: "what are we going to do with him?" And someone from the audience shouted: "Kill him."

This should be remembered as the day when McCain and Palin became just two sad, racist, xenophobic, idiotic criminals with nothing but hatred spewing out of their disfigured faces. I will be truly ashamed to be American if these two get to run our exhausted country.

Bracing for Republican Stupidity

2008-10-05T08:25:00.000-07:00

As McCain continues to trail behind Obama and Obama starting to surge even in places like Indiana and North Carolina (the latest poll shows a virtual tie in both states!), the McCidiot camp has announced an all-out frontal assault on Obama's character. In a shockingly blunt admission, one of Mcidiot's chief advisers said that they would "raise doubts" about Obama's honesty and integrity, and try to convince the American people that he would be a "risky" character.

I would be worried had the McCain people not proven to be so inept at hiding their real motives before. The whole obsession with Obama being risky cannot be divorced from their nervousness about his skin color. Every time they raise the issue of Obama's "riskiness" and try to paint him as "the Other" the left needs to call them out on it: you are racist, xenophobic, narrow-minded idiots who have nothing else to offer to the American people and instead have to appeal to the worst in America. Obama, on the other hand, with his message of hope, change, and substantive programs, appeals to the best. Every time, the Mcidiot camp raises any of the following issues--Reverend Wright, Ayers, Michelle's patriotism--the left has to step in and call them on it. Shout them down, and shame them into a corner. They should have no place in our public square, especially in times like these when the average American wonders if his/her money in the bank will be there tomorrow morning.

And how does McCidiot offer to calm our anxieties? By repeating the tired, and drained, attack that Obama had links with the "domestic terrorist" Ayers. The fact that this radical conducted his activities in the 60s when Obama was 8 years old and that they met while serving on the same board while a part of the same university, does not preclude them from claiming Obama's ties to Ayers' radical philosophy (despite the fact that Obama has repeatedly condemned his previous activities and even though Ayers is a respected member of the community in Chicago).

I would also be worried had this been 2004 and not 2008. The reason why these tactics worked against Kerry and will not against Obama are manifold, but it mainly has to do with a) timing and b) Obama's character. Obama showed his shrewd political skill by jumping into the race this election season: he gauged the thirst for change in America, something that Hillary miscalculated. His calm, deliberate, and genuinely nice character serve as a protective shield against idiotic attacks by people like Palin who open a bottle of champagne every time they manage to utter two consecutive coherent sentences without stumbling.

And the American people are tired. They want real solutions, at least attempts at solutions, and not these kinds of idiotic attacks. This is why I am convinced that this time, these attacks will not work. And the Obama camp has promised a pre-emptive strike on these attacks (please excuse the word choice here).

The Momentum Shift: Obama Widens his Lead

2008-10-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

I know polls can be deceiving and sometimes outright wrong, but what I just heard on the NPR certainly gives me hope for November. The new Pew poll has Obama up by 7 percentage points, 49 to 42 %, the first time the Pew poll (considered one of the most reliable) has Obama in a statistically significant lead. What is more significant than this national poll, given the fact that we don't have national but electoral elections, are the new polls by the Quinnipiac University Poll from Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. These give Obama a widening lead in all of the battleground states: keep in mind, all of the polls were taken after the first Presidential debate and McCain's disastrous decision to "suspend" his campaign during the bailout crisis.

The Quinnipiac University Poll released October 1st, finds Obama with an 8 point lead in Ohio and yes, Florida of all places. Even more significantly, the poll shows Obama with a whopping 15 point lead in Pennsylvania.

The reason behind Obama's widening lead is not only the economic crisis, but the public's increasing disgust with Palin. The same poll found that 51% say that Palin is not qualified to be vice president. As for Obama's performance in the first debate, 72% of those polled find it to have been "excellent" compared to 59% of those who say the same for McCain.

Again, a word of caution: polls are tricky things. They are shifty and can be quite deceiving. But the fact that we are only five weeks away from the election day gives me great confidence that these polls truly do reflect a tremendous momentum shift in the favor of Obama.

Republicans' Self-Destruction

2008-09-30T09:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's dramatic defeat of the bailout bill on the House floor shot shivers down my spine and made me really worried about the future of our (and world's) economy. But, a small moment of gratification came when I realized that by defeating the bill, the House Republicans were self-destructing.

First, they threw McCain under the bus. In the past 2 weeks, McCain proceeded to "put the country first" by dramatically suspending his campaign, running around the Capitol Hill, pretending to frantically call people from his D.C. campaign headquarters, and railed against Obama's supposed exploitation of the situation for political purposes. He returned to the campaign trail yesterday, triumphantly claiming nothing less than a Napoleonic victory in rallying the Republican support for the bill. Literally, an hour later, the traders on the stock-market and millions of Americans watched the bill go down in one of the most memorable moments on the floor of the American House of Representatives. The market proceeded to lose more than 7% of its value, marking the greatest one day plummet in the history of capitalism. Thanks McCain for your wonderful and effective leadership. I guess experience does count.

More than wrecking McCain's campaign, the House Republicans probably destroyed the Republican party for years to come. While they voted NO primarily with their re-election chances in mind (and taking into account the anger from their constituents regarding the bailout bill) it is certain that their vote plunged the economy even further into the abyss. The fact that many of them justified voting NO by clinging to the right-wing narrow-minded ideology of Reagan that sees any regulation as the ultimate evil--the very ideology that got us to where we are--ensured that it would be the Republicans who would be blamed for the failure of the bill and the continuing deterioration of our collective economy health.

Yes, it is true that many Democrats also voted NO, but let's remember that the Democratic leadership lived up to its end of the bargain and delivered more than 60% of its caucus. Thus, once the voters realize just how necessary this bailout had been they will swiftly turn around and blame their representatives for furthering wrecking their daily lives. Voters are fickle. While many of them don't support the bailout right now, the polls show that most of them are simply confused about the details of it. Had the Republicans had the political courage and principles to stand in front of the American people and explain why this was necessary after the Bush Republican Party wrecked our economy, they might have gotten some political benefit out of it. This way they will be blamed for putting their re-election bids ahead of the country's interests.

David Brooks rarely says anything I agree with, but I couldn't agree with him more this morning when he said in his NYT editorial: "House Republicans led the way and will get most of the blame. It has been interesting to watch them on their single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party." No amount of spin can save them from a devastating defeat in November.

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin--Hillarious

2008-09-28T10:17:00.001-07:00

McCain is Unfit for Presidency

2008-09-28T08:51:00.000-07:00

Friday night's debate between John McCain and Barack Obama showed once again that John McCain is as unqualified to run this country as Sarah Palin. His demeanor on that stage is just not worthy of a leader of a country that has had to endure 8 years of Bushies.

Consistently, Obama showed his deference to this supposed veteran of foreign affairs, but McCain could not conceal his contempt for Obama: not once, did he look at him, and every time Obama spoke, McCain smirked, grinned, and uttered incomprehensible sighs, shifting from foot to foot (but this might have been his exhaustion after having to stand for more than 10 minutes). McCain exhibited all the characteristics that the American people hate to see in their potential leaders: grouchiness, sense of self entitlement to the Presidency, contempt for your opponent as if he/she doesn't have as much right to be on that stage as you, and just overall sense of dread and pessimism. McCain was Reagan stripped of any optimism or good-natured humor.

The debate once again showed that Obama would probably be one of the best presidents we have had in a while. His answers were crisp and precise, but yet extremely thoughtful. This man is deliberate always weighing all possible perspectives before coming down with his own opinion. His hope in the good nature of the American people is genuine and it really comes across through his demeanor, especially his smile. At the risk of sounding superficial, Obama's smile alone would do so much to improve our standing in the world. Compare that to McCain's smirk that never leaves his face.

On Friday night, we had a chance to see two faces of America. I think the polls increasingly show which face the Americans want to present to the world after 8 agonizing years of W.

Proud to be a Liberal--West-Wing style

2008-09-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of my friend's blog, here is a little stimulant for all those discouraged liberals out there.

Hitting back hard

2008-09-12T13:32:00.001-07:00

Another response to Republican lies from the Democrats....

Why We Are in Trouble!

2008-09-12T08:14:00.001-07:00

Watching parts of Sarah Palin's first interview with Charles Gibson from last night, I realized that we--the Democrats, liberals, independent-minded Republicans, and all thoughtful citizens of this country--are really in trouble.

Her answers consisted of moral certitudes, unflinching self-righteousness, and knee-jerk aggressiveness all of which belied the deeply seated intellectual insecurity. But it is exactly these traits that tap into the never-ending reservoir of the average voter who probably changes the channel while Obama attempts to give thoughtful answers on complicated issues, such as the role of Iran and Russia in today's world. There was not a hint of any sort of deliberation to Sarah Palin's worldview: she knows that there is evil in the world and she would help McCain rid the world of it. Her confused look after Gibson asked her if she believed in Bush's pre-emptive strike doctrine reveals that this woman has never even questioned this man's dangerous and reckless black-and-white vision of the world. But it is exactly this certainty that appeals to many voters, and it is exactly this certainty that is undermining Obama's message.

The recent shift in McCain's strategy has been marked by an all out assault on anything Obama does, has done, or will do, without any regards for the so-called "facts" or the "truth." The result has been a complete chaos in both campaigns' messages, which is exactly what the McCain campaign wants. They have successfully thrown Obama off his message and tapped into the voters' fear that everything that politicians say will be a lie. They are fine with that because they have no issues to run on.

As Paul Krugman noted in his op-ed this morning, the way the McCain campaign has been run shows what kind of president he would be. Bush's 2000 campaign also muddled the facts, but you had to have a handle on arithmetic to understand that their tax policy was a big deception. This time around, McCain's campaign does not even attempt to hide their lies underneath a semi-truthful cover--they just simply lie and repeat it over and over again. Given the fact that Bush's 2000 campaign strategy in selling the tax policy later morphed into his strategy of selling the Iraq war, can you imagine what kind of policies McCain would employ, given the tactics of his campaign?

It is simply too scary to think about. But to quote George Bernard Shaw, "Democracy is a device that insures that we shall be governed no better than we deserve." And I am more convinced every day that this country does not deserve Barack Obama.

Obama Hits Back

2008-09-11T13:38:00.001-07:00

Time for an all out Offensive

2008-09-09T09:22:00.000-07:00

In the last few days I realized once again how overly optimistic I can get about the American voter. I actually hoped that most voters vote on issues, that they follow the campaign, and that they care about the specific plans the candidates are offering in improving their lives. Well, the Palin effect and McCain's bounce shows once again, as many of my friends (even on this blog) have noted, that many voters respond in a very superficial way. Despite Obama's outline of his specific policies during his acceptance speech, and the actual FACTS that are emerging about our economy (the abysmal unemployment rate, declining productivity, increasing rates of poverty), the so-called "independents" seem to be swinging McCain's way and are finding his sudden message of "change" (I wonder where he got that from) appealing. This can be explained by two factors. These voters (including many white women) are either completely and utterly uninformed or they hide behind Palin in justifying voting against an African-American candidate. There is no third explanation.

The fact that the issues and the actually state of our REALITY stands on the side of the Democrats and yet, the Republicans are rapidly gaining ground because Sarah Palin "makes us think like anyone can be President" really confirms my belief from 2004 that this democracy is in serious trouble. The fact that the Republicans at the convention treated the American people with such contempt--cynically adopting the change mantra, uttering blatant lies about the American people, denigrating the working class--and yet, they seem to have gained a considerable advantage tells me that many of our fellow voters are either completely uninformed, disinterested in what actually happens to this country, or simply stupid. Many of my Democrat friends have accused me of elitism for this observation, but I just don't know how you can explain this otherwise.

So, what are the Democrats to do? Obama has run a stellar campaign and has been on the message 100% of the time. He needs to keep doing what he has been doing so well: articulating in simplest terms possible how he will improve the lives of the American people. But at the same time, they have to release the so-called 527s. These independent organizations should serve as attack dogs who lower themselves to the level of superficiality that the Republicans are operating on (with a considerable success). They should flood the channels with TV Ads showing: 1) Sarah Palin's pastor saying that Israel deserves attacks because of God's judgment for not accepting Jesus; 2) the clip of Sarah Palin herself telling us that we are in Iraq on God's mission, and that the believers in her church should pray for the pipeline in Alaska that enriched her and her family; 3) emails need to be circulated outlining her record in Alaska while a small town mayor showing her to be an utterly incompetent mayor who drove the city's budget into a deficit, wasted millions of dollars, increased taxes, and tried to ban library books (all of these are true by the way).

Simultaneously, the Congressional Democrats have to go on a legislative offensive against the Republicans in Congress, the Bush administration, and McCain himself. How do they do this? By bringing to the floor of both the House and the Senate bills that are going to appeal to the American people (on health-care, energy independence, equal pay for women, etc), and forcing the Republicans to vote NO.

This is why for the life of me, I cannot figure out why the Congressional Democratic leadership walked away yesterday from the bill that would expand health-care for children. The Pelosi-Reid coalition has been a great disappointment in this regard. Their justification for walking away from the bill was that the Republicans would never support it and the President would veto it. Exactly!!! They should have brought that bill on the floor of both the House and the Senate, and Obama should have come to the Senate floor and invite John McCain to stand in front of the American people and vote NO on a bill that would expand health-care coverage for millions of American children. Another bill would be equal pay for women, the bill that McCain voted AGAINST in the past. Forcing the MCcain-Palin ticket to vote NO on one of the most important issues for the women of this country would destroy any possibility of Palin appealing to a single woman let alone Hillary supporters.

Then the 527s and local Democratic party headquarters should run ads against all those who voted against those bills, equating them with George Bush, and on the national level, the Obama campaign should run an ad showing McCain voting NO. And this should be inserted into the loop of Cable news on a daily basis.

But it strikes me that the Democrats have never been very good at using the little power leverage they do have on the Hill. The Congress can be pretty ineffective in forcing policy, but it is an extremely effective public relations machine that can cower the Republicans into submission or an outright defeat. Come on, Democrats! Show some frigging backbone here! And let's not have a repeat of 2004!

The Two Americas

2008-09-06T10:38:00.000-07:00

The press needs to do its job this election and hammer the Republicans on their blatant hypocrisy that was displayed so cynically during their agonizingly long convention. For a party that accuses the Democrats on a daily basis of being "out of touch" with the ordinary people and their economic and cultural realities, the Republicans certainly displayed such contempt for the working class of this country that I think they are not fit to serve in any public office until they collectively apologize.

First all, a speaker after speaker uttered blatant lies against Obama. Guliani said (while twisting his already twisted face into an unexplainable grimace) that Obama "looks down" on small towns because they are not cosmopolitan enough. For a man who was a mayor of New York City and who, following his divorce, lived with a gay couple in a posh-part of Manhattan, to play the populist-cultural warrior card is not only transparent but is insulting to the intelligence of the American voter. Is it is possible that there are people out there who actually believe anything that comes out of that man's mouth?

Mitt Romney really topped the evening when he said that indeed change was necessary, but that we needed to change a "liberal Washington" to a conservative Washington. Another insult to the intelligence of the American people who, Mitt assumes, would not realize that it was the Republicans who had been in office for the past 8 years. His speech was also the most blatantly plagiarized version of Obama's change mantra.

But the climax came with Sarah Palin. This "pit-bull with lipstick" (her words) spent the most of her time denigrating the lives of millions of hardship-struck Americans. In particular, she (like Guliani) denigrated Obama's grassroots organizing in the South side Chicago showing blatant disrespect to hundreds of thousands of organizers who wake up every day to go to their low-paying jobs and try to be forces of change in their poverty-stricken communities. Her cynical, blatantly deceitful, and insulting behavior on that stage, should disqualify Sarah Palin from running a local Wal-mart let alone our troubled country.

Watching the sea of whiteness and oldness in that Republican crowd, I was reminded once again that in this election, the two parties do represent two different Americas. Of course, there are more than two Americas, but the demographic and ideological fault-line of this complicated country falls along the party lines. The Republicans have finally taken off their cloak of populism (despite still professing it) and came out for what they are: a party of business and corporate interests who deeply believes that working peoples' struggles are of their own making and that they should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. This is also the party that has maintained its hold on power since the Civil Rights movement often due to its cynical and chauvinistic manipulation of the race card and still continues to do so (hence the uninterrupted whiteness of the crowd). The Democrats, on the other hand, are indeed a much more inclusive party, a characteristic that makes it less disciplined and less attuned to cut-throat manipulation of reality in order to attain power. They are the party that unites the lunch-box workers, latte-drinking professionals, gay/lesbian/ally activists, civil rights veterans, among other demographics (excuse my boxing in of peoples' identities here, but I do think it helps us see the complex reality in a more comprehensive way).

I have nothing in common with the Republican America. This is an America that looks at the world through its own self-definition and expects it to conform to its own idea of what it should look like. This is an America that believes that blue-collar workers like my parents should be left on their own and should not necessarily be guaranteed decent retirement. This is an America that believes that my gay and lesbian friends should not be allowed to visit each other in hospitals when, God forbid, something happens; or that they should be allowed to adopt children from under-funded and often abusive foster homes. This is an intolerant America that in its religious self-righteousness, puritanism, and ideological fanaticism despises any hint of intellectual curiosity and expects absolute conformity to its views.

The Democratic America is a more playful America. It is an America that is more self-critical, more intellectually curious, and more open to advice from other countries. It is an America that due to its diversity cannot maintain any ideological or religious homogeneity over its followers. As a result, the Democratic America not only encourages, but often insists on questionings what are often seen as the founding tenants of American life: values, family, religion, war on terror, etc. It is an America that is impatient with certainties, knowing that these result in tyranny.

I feel like I came to this country in search of the Democratic America and in the past eight years I have felt like this America has been under a continuous assault by the Republican America.

This is why there is so much at stake for me in this election.

The Obama Narrative

2008-09-05T16:21:00.001-07:00

An excellently crafted video biography of Barack.

Why They Support Sarah Palin

2008-09-04T20:21:00.000-07:00

When asked why she supports Sarah Palin for VP, a Republican supporter said:

"Well I love Sarah because she makes us feel like anyone can be President!"

This pretty much sums up the collective IQ of the Sarah Palin voting base.

Sarah Palin: McCain's Moment of Panic

2008-08-30T08:05:00.000-07:00

Well now many of my fellow Barack supporters who had been nervous about Biden as the VP pick may rest assured since John McCain might have destroyed his chances by picking Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Sarah Palin is a rabidly right wing, gun-toting, environment-hating Republican whose ideology is sure to alienate everyone except for the most narrow-minded Evangelicals in the mold of James Dobson and Pat Robertson. This is a woman who believes that global warming is not caused by human activity and who adheres religiously (pun intended) to the imperialist credo that "man should rule over nature." In fact, she has fought hard to prevent government protection of polar bears (who doesn't like polar bears?) and has just recently destroyed a legislative attempt at protecting salmon from contamination. She has also fought for a pipeline that would pollute Alaska and stuff the already overflowing coffers of oil companies (accidentally, her husband works for BP despite assurances that he would stop working for the oil company if she won the governorship due to a possible conflict of interest--of course he later backtracked saying the family needed money).

Sarah Palin eschews any scientific thought by publicly proclaiming her belief in "intelligent design" and fighting to get it into our classrooms where it should be taught "alongside" evolution. The fact that evolution is a SCIENTIFIC THEORY and "intelligent design" a story from children's coloring books doesn't seem to fit into her decision-making process. Makes you see what kind of president she would make (God forbid).

Rarely, have VP candidates had a major impact on presidential elections in this country, but in this case, I really think Palin will hurt McCain. And here is why.

1) McCain will lose the West. In the most recent issue of the New Yorker, Ryan Lizza traces the reasons why the Democrats have experienced a revival of their fortunes in the West and in particular, in places like Colorado. He interviews their recently elected Democratic Governor Ritter who argues that his rise to power and the ousting of the Republicans from both Houses in the state had to do with an internal Republican party rebellion by the "government pragmatists" as well as "moral pragmatists." The first are economic Republicans who are less concerned with abortion, gay rights, and other polarizing issues and more with the way the government governs and impacts their daily life. The second are more religious Republicans who care about social issues, but still acknowledge the lack of consensus in the country and are increasingly focused on pragmatic daily things. The key to Democrats' success in the state has been their ability to cut into the two of these voting blocs. And the amazing demographic changes in the state (and the West) will certainly increase these voting blocs: the state is being transformed by the influx of more skilled, high tech as well as hospitality business employees, as well as more affluent skiers who are buying their second-homes in the suburbs. With Sarah Palin, McCain has probably lost his shot at Colorado, New Mexico, and maybe even Nevada.

2) McCain's Gender Blindness. Hillary's supporters will now run towards Obama, literally. McCain's poor and blatantly transparent attempt to appeal to women voters in this country by his VP choice shows a gender misunderstanding so appalling that you would think the man lives in the Victorian era. This man, and his Republican cohorts, seems to believe that any woman can appeal to other women in this country, regardless of her substance: her record on abortion rights alone is certain to alienate any woman who might have been tempted to vote for McCain but cares about issues of women's rights. The fact that Palin herself calls herself a "feminist for life," shows a complete lack of knowledge of what the feminist movement in this country has been all about, and also points to Palin's eschewing of any serious analytical thought. The offensiveness of this cynical appeal to women was best described by Gail Collins in NYT this morning: "The idea that women are going to race off to vote for any candidate with the same internal plumbing is both offensive and historically wrong."

3) McCain's Judgment. I think the choice shows the decision-making process (if we can call it that) of John McCain and offers us an important glimpse into the way President McCain would make decisions. This was a decision that was impulsive, reckless, blatantly cynical, and motivated by political pander rather than knowledge, calculation, and judgment. I have a feeling McCain was sitting home watching Barack's speech on Thursday night and after realizing the extent of Obama's appeal and his profound impact on people's emotions, he jumped out of his chair, fumbled through his notebook, and called Palin to offer her the job. Compare this decision to Barack's careful deliberations on his VP nominee.

4) Ideologization of Politics. Finally, McCain's choice shows that his administration would be continuation of George W. Bush in that ideology and not expertise and the thickness of one's resume would be the primary qualifications for spots in the administration. After we have endured 8 years of an administration that gave the top FEMA job to a former Arabian horse association president, filled the Justice Department with anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, anti-environment nut jobs, can we really afford 4 more years of an administration that would prize ideology above governance? This, I think, is the most potent line of attack the Democrats can (and absolutely should) make. It is also a legitimate argument.

As Collins suggests in her column, in VP debates, Biden should use the memorable line (used by Democratic VP Lloyd Bentsen against Republican Dan Quayle in 1988) against Palin: “I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine, and governor, you’re no Hillary Clinton.”

Obama Delivers Again

2008-08-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

Wow! That was probably the best piece of American political rhetoric I have ever seen in my life! I won't spoil your memories of that brilliant acceptance speech by my amateurish and long-winded analysis, but I think the most important part of that speech is Obama's forceful response to Republicans' idiotic, but oft-repeated and effective, charge that Democrats are weak on defense. Here are some several memorable quotes:

"John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell - but he won't even go to the cave where he lives."

"You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in eighty countries by occupying Iraq. You don't protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington. You can't truly stand up for Georgia when you've strained our oldest alliances. If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice - but it is not the change we need."

And my personal favorite:

"We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country. Don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans -- Democrats and Republicans - have built, and we are here to restore that legacy."

Bill Clinton in all his glory

2008-08-27T18:34:00.000-07:00

Bill Clinton just completely redeemed himself. What a superb piece of American political rhetoric. I just can't stay mad at the guy. I think both Clintons have redeemed themselves in the past two nights.

Fox News

2008-08-27T17:48:00.000-07:00

I wonder if it is possible to have your local cable company scramble your Fox News Channel. I would pay extra for this service. I feel awful having a part of my monthly cable payment go to Fox News, the bastion of racist, homophobic, chauvinistic, and just plain moronic feelings.

Also, if I were Howard Dean I would have refused to issue accreditation to Fox News, since they are not a legitimate news network. Considering the fact that over 90% of Fox News viewers are already Republicans, I think it only would have helped maintain clean air in that convention hall. At the moment Obama was officially nominated to be the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, they were talking about "a missing toddler."

OBAMA NOMINATED, HISTORY MADE!!!!

2008-08-27T15:59:00.001-07:00

Call me a sap, but I was moved to tears as Hillary Clinton stood with her New York delegation and officially put a stop to a roll-call vote, and moved to nominate Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee for the President of the United States. As she uttered these words, the convention hall went into what it seemed like a delirious uproar. Of course, this was carefully orchestrated, but Pelosi's gavel really opened a new chapter in this country's history. As they showed many African-American delegates breaking down on camera, trying through tears to express their joy and hope for a better America, I realized how great the Democrats can be.

I was reminded of Hubert Humphrey's attempt to get the civil rights agenda adopted as the official Democratic platform in the immediate post WWII years; Lyndon Johnson's work for the passage of the Civil Rights Act; and the significance of Bill Clinton's presidency in advancing Civil Rights.

This is one of those days when I truly feel proud to be a Democrat.

Hillary's Brilliance

2008-08-26T20:16:00.000-07:00

Well, I give credit where credit is due, and tonight, Hillary was great. She tapped into her supporters' immense support, and then gradually channeled it into her unconditional support for Obama. I think her speech echoed the video showed by Chelsea as she introduced her mother. The video opened with shots from Hillary's childhood, went on to talk about her campaign, and then blended into images of Obama (first Obama and Hillary and then Obama by himself). Similarly, in the speech, she opened with her own campaign, and tied it into Barack's story, warning her supporters (it seemed to me very genuinely) that this "is not a time to stand on the side-lines."

I think that there will always be some of her supporters who won't support Barack, but I think tonight is certainly a turning point. It is interesting that the Fox News website is not even headlining her speech (like all other major networks, including the BBC). That in itself is evidence to how successful the Democrats have been tonight in uniting.

Bill still worries me. He was on the floor tonight, looking on admiringly to Hillary. More about that tomorrow after his big speech.

The Childishness of American politics

2008-08-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

Watching some of the most militant supporters of Hillary throw public tantrums because "their girl" wasn't picked, I am really reminded of how childish the politics are in this country.

The fact that Obama's policies are almost identical to Hillary's and that he would push the agenda at least as (if not more) progressive than Hillary, does not faze them. Hillary lost the primary and this reflects poorly on them. This election is about their personal feelings which have been hurt beyond repair. They have to be "acknowledged," "their feelings" respected...I have one message for them: GROW THE F$%#@$# UP!!!! Seriously!

In this election so much is at stake: the possibility of another war; getting out of Iraq; US' respect in the world; the composition of the Supreme Court for years to come; the state of workers' rights (currently non-existent), and the list goes on. But these people (like most of us) have been told from early on, that they are at the center of the universe, and that the world revolves around them. Well, it doesn't.

And if Obama doesn't win, we don't deserve to have better leaders. To quote Bill Maher: "The American people get the leaders they deserve. And they don't deserve very good leaders."

In Anticipation of Obama's Thursday Speech

2008-08-25T20:04:00.001-07:00

Considering that Obama's acceptance speech will be delivered on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, I thought this would be appropriate. This is probably the best speech I have ever seen.

To All the Democrats Out there: Relax!

2008-08-25T15:56:00.000-07:00

I think that everyone needs to take a moment, breathe deeply, and chill out. Obama's chances are not ruined, he is not headed towards defeat, and Hillary's supporters will not defect en masse towards McCain. (As a caveat, let me say that I have been guilty of the same pessimism as recently as my post "Worrying about November" below).

First of all, this is exactly the moment when voters (unbelievably enough) start tuning in, and this is why the polls are tight. The polls from way back in June can be tossed out the window because it was mostly hardcore Democratic/Republican activists who were paying attention. Secondly, close elections are a norm rather than an aberration in American politics. This is an extremely diverse country and winning the Presidency is difficult because one has to appeal to different social groups which often have incompatible self-interests. So, Obama is on the right track: he has done a good job of introducing himself to the American people, the Convention will be a wonderful success, and he will top it with an amazing acceptance speech in front of 75,000 people. Biden was the right choice given the political climate, Obama's perceived weaknesses, and the narrative the Obama campaign wants to tell to the American worker.

I don't know what it is (maybe our more thoughtful, academic nature) that makes us liberal Democrats so hesitant about our chances, so prone to pessimism that often degenerates into downright fatalism. The problem is that this mood--once it becomes widespread--turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. It echoes the cable television news cycle where a day begins with a "pundit" reporting that Hillary's supporters are angry at Obama and throughout the day, the idea is almost literally pounded into people's heads so that by the end of the day, Hillary's supporters really start having problems with voting for Obama.

So, get a beer (or wine), sit back on your couch, and enjoy what it promises to be a wonderful historic Convention. And think to yourself: Obama WILL Win!

Obama's Choice: Joe Biden

2008-08-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

As I waited for my text message to go off, around midnight last night CNN broke the news that Joe Biden would be Obama's Vice Presidential candidate. Even though I expected Biden to top the list, I was a bit surprised that Obama would go with what it seems to be a risky candidate. Why risky?

1) Biden sometimes has no self-control when it comes to public speaking. He says things that (while some of them are pretty funny), can get you in hot water. Remember him saying that Barack was the first "clean-cut" and handsome "mainstream" African-American? This happened on the first day he announced his own candidacy for President and had to spend the next week backtracking from the remarks. Obama accepted the apology. Biden's record shows him to be a strong advocate of civil rights and the comment was just a poorly constructed attempt at a joke.

2) Biden's past has one dark spot that Republicans might exploit: the accusations of plagiarism. Having lived in the world of academia for the past 7 years (and condemned to spend the rest of my life there!), the mere mention of this terrible word sends shivers down my spine (I exaggerate of course). But back in the day, Biden was accused lifting a whole speech from a British politician without acknowledging him. Now, I am sure lot of politicians do this on a daily basis, but he got caught. On the other hand, the academia notwithstanding, I think the plagiarism charge does not really resonate with the population at large. And Barack knows this very well.

3) Biden's judgment on Iraq/the use of Bosnia as an analogy. This is actually my greatest concern about Biden. First, he voted for the war in Iraq. He later retracted his vote and apologized, something I admire in a politicians. (and something that Hillary never did for her vote). However, he then proceeded to call for a massive troop withdrawal from Iraq and suggested that Iraq be split into ethnic entities just like Dayton Bosnia. Biden consistently referred to Dayton Bosnia as a success story and a model for Iraq. WRONG!!! Post-Dayton Bosnia is a crippled, paralyzed, pseudo-state where the Dayton Constitution enshrined the Apartheid-like ethnic division of the country and stripped all individuals to their bare ethnic identities.

Biden's judgment on this echoes the larger strategy in the American politics: deal with only topical countries and once they are out of the headlines, stop following the progress and move on. But still use the country in which we messed up as a success story!

Now all these caveats notwithstanding, I think Obama knows what he is doing. Despite these gaffes (and most in D.C. and the country don't see these as gaffes to begin with), Biden has amassed a serious resume when it comes to dealing with foreign leaders. The American people are too distracted and plagued by the attention-deficit-disorder to follow any of these very closely, but the narrative of Biden's foreign policy experience is sure to vow many voters and assuage some fears that Obama is inexperienced.

Secondly, Biden's matter-of-factness and his Scranton, Pen, roots bide well for Obama's chances among some of the blue collar folks in the mining region of this battleground state.
And finally, and most importantly, Biden is excellent when he is in the attack mode. He does not pull any punches, delivers them with fiery speed and brilliant articulateness. This is exactly what Obama needs. He needs to stay above the fray and be the "nice guy" candidate (the polls show that most Americans do see Obama as a relatively nice person), while Biden rips into McCain.

So to all of my friends and Barack supporters, don't be alarmed: Biden is a great pick! Probably won't help Obama take the White House on his own, but will certainly help.

Comcast's Idiocy

2008-08-16T19:01:00.000-07:00

It was only a post ago that I ranted about the way airlines in this country treat their customers. Well, I had just been through another horror encounter with a greedy, corporate monopoly that has become a victim of its own corporate success. I am talking about Comcast, the omnipotent cable/internet/phone provider in my great state of Illinois. In the last few years, Comcast has gotten a reputation on Wall Street as a tough competitor which had bought up many smaller companies all with the purpose of delivering great service to its customers. Yeah, right!

If you want a high-speed internet connection and cable TV in my area, you HAVE TO deal with Comcast. You have no choice. I first installed my internet/Cable service in June, but I recently moved, and that's where all hell broke loose. I called Comcast to ask for a service transfer the first day of August and they scheduled the transfer for August 16, which was more than two weeks away. Considering the fact that they are THE ONLY provider that offers internet/cable packages and that August is the move-in month in Champaign, I understood that they were busy.

In the meantime, a representative from Comcast called me on August 7 to let me know that my service had been moved up to that Saturday, August 9. I was out of town but they assured me that I didn't have to be home for the service to be started. My girlfriend was at home and had hooked everything up waiting for the service to start. Nothing: no Internet, no Cable. I called the company a few days later only to be told that they had never called me to move up my date! So, I either had imagined the whole conversation from the few days before, or they had missed their own appointment and were now lying to me. They assured me that the service would come on August 16.

This morning, as soon as I got up, I called them, asking for my service. A cheerful representative said that the service had been switched on. After connecting my box and my modem, I realized that there was not a trace of either Internet or Cable in my apartment. I called them again, only to be assured that I must have done something wrong, since their records showed the service had been switched on and the technicians "had already been in the area." After the tech department walked me through the installation, we both realized that indeed, there was no service. So they said a technician would be coming by. I waited for most of the morning and the afternoon, and they never showed up, or even bothered to call me.

So, once again, I reached for the phone and after getting through a maze that is their customer line, I got a hold of a human being. They said that my service had not been switched on since I had canceled it! What!!!! This is when I completely lost my cool to the amazement of my friends in whose presence I was making the phone call. I had been delayed, put on hold, lied to. In short, I had been treated like any other American consumer. (In fact, there is an entire Internet movement to bring the Comcast down. They congregate on a blog with a telling name: http://comcastmustdie.blogspot.com/).

After apologizing to the service representative for my tone (and assuring her that I knew it was not her fault), I proceeded to ask what I should do to get my internet and cable working. She said I should walk to the college bookstore and meet with their representative tomorrow morning and my service would be switched on 24 hours following the meeting. Unbelievable!

So, I am still Internetless and Cable-less. This really has very little to do with my spoiled ways of needing my Internet and Cable fix, but more to do with the way the whole system treats consumers in this country. It is amazing to me that in a country that boasts on a daily basis of being a consumer paradise, and a country whose economy is run by the ever-rational "market forces," which always favor the consumer, this kind of thing not only happens, but increasingly seems to be the norm.

Comcast is another example of a de-regulated monopoly completely out of control. It is another evidence that we need heavy government regulation of businesses, a strong anti-monopoly watch, and a strong federal-level consumer protection agency that Nader has been advocating.

This experience has made me look nostalgically on my experience of getting Internet in East Mostar. But I will leave that for another post.

Russia's Bullying

2008-08-15T08:26:00.000-07:00

Russia's actions in the last week have shown once again that despite changing its ideological cloak in the 1990ies, Russia still remains a regional bully. Incapable of projecting its power outside of its traditional "sphere of influence," Putin's Russia is a country frantically trying to prove to the rest of the world that it still matters. If in the process of proving this, it murders thousands of civilians, destroys the infrastructure of an entire country, and demolishes its territorial sovereignty, so much the better (in the eyes of the over the top, macho, judo expert Putin).

Things seem to be getting worse with Poland reaching the deal with the US on the missile defense shield. I have always been opposed to this stupid program which seems to only further alienate Russia and the rest of the world from the US, but Russia's actions in Georgia and its response to the Polish-US agreement have made me rethink my initial opposition. If Russia was so bold as to invade Georgia (going well beyond the separatist province of South Ossetia), who is to guarantee Poland that it would not be next.

I think this is a remote possibility as Poland is a member of NATO and the EU, but given the deeply rooted anti-Russian animosity within Poland (and most Eastern Europe), Polish leaders were under an immense political pressure to conclude this agreement.

The events in Georgia can also be seen as a delayed reaction of Russia to the independence of Kosovo as they seem to be using South Ossetia to prove their point that Kosovo set the precedent in international relations. At the same time, the US is completely powerless (militarily, but more importantly, politically) to do anything about the situation but complain. Thus, I see the dire situation as another evidence of the diminished US' credibility after 8 years of the Bush administration. Thanks, W.

Worrying about November

2008-08-13T16:44:00.000-07:00

I have been catching up on my political news, since I don't yet have cable or internet at home due to my recent move, and have become really worried about Obama's prospects in November. Most polls show him leading McCain by the average between 3-5 points which, historically speaking (most pundits agree), means absolutely nothing. In most elections that have ended in a landslide in the past, the polls at this time of the campaign would show Obama leading McCain by at least 10 point margin. On the contrary, the polls seem to be tightening in the most important states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and of course, Florida (I think the latter is already lost!).

What is even more worrying than these polls is the fact that race attitudes cannot be explicitly captured by these polls as most people refuse to admit they are racist. However, pollsters report that many low-income and surprisingly college-educated (Bachelors Degree level) whites mistrust Obama for one reason or another. I am not hesitant in saying that most of these white voters are blinded by their prejudiced attitudes towards race that makes them see Obama as the Other who cannot be trusted. This is blatantly evident in their pronouncements of Obama as a Muslim (despite repeatedly being confronted with the evidence to the contrary), as a flaming liberal, etc. They refuse to accept such evidence because then they would have to confront the real reason why they are not supporting him: because they are racist. I am tired of many left-leaning pundits walking on eggshells in analyzing these people's attitudes. They need to be called what they are, and if that shames them, then maybe they do have to be shamed, publicly.

In a year when a whopping majority of voters want change, hate the Republicans, mistrust McCain and agree on almost every issue that Obama espouses, a failure of Obama to pull a landslide (or even a victory) would be a devastating blow to this country. It would cement racial attitudes and show that many whites have not boarded the post-Civil Rights bandwagon, and embitter the world against the US.

But that is something we are already used to, after 8 years of Bush.

I still think Obama will pull a narrow win, but I thought it would be healthy if we stepped back and realistically looked at the reason why he seems to be failing to landslide McCain into oblivion.

Another travel rant

2008-08-07T20:54:00.000-07:00

I just arrived in D.C. after being delayed for almost 5 hours at O'Hare--again!!! Initially, it was the weather and United did not even bother to put more than one customer service representative to rebook all the pissed off passengers. As a result, the standby list soon became an unmanagable mess as the over-worked, over-stressed out customer service representatives called names in a rapid succession, before people could even show up, skipping names. As the flights kept being delayed, something else caught my eye: the reasons for the delay kept changing. It was weather, and once the weather cleared, it soon became "servicing an airplane," or "mechanical error," etc.

Which made me think that there might be something else going on here. I am not saying the airlines are deliberately delaying flights, but it seems pretty certain to me that these delays are of great financial benefit for their profit margins. Think about it: the delayed flights allow passengers to accumulate to one flight instead of being scattered across flights and having half-empty planes fly around, wasting fuel, the cost of which had thrown some airlines to the edge of bankruptcy. In the past few years (especially the last month) airline executives have complained that their margin of profit is suffering from the inability to pack planes to the capacity. "Weather problems" seem like a godsend to me.

What is infuriating about the whole mess is the way the average American consumer reacts. Instead of demanding his/her rights be respected, the average American traveler shrugs his/her shoulders and accepts it as inevitable. In a conversation with one such passenger I suggested that in case of delays, airlines should be mandated to give us food coupons so that we don't spend money on overpriced airport food. He said that would be unreasonable since airlines are really hurting today. So this passenger did not think of her own interests before putting the interests of a major, multi-billion dollar corporation ahead of their own. This is another sign that the average Joe has internalized the "spirit of capitalism" to such an extent that he not only fails to protest getting screwed, he asks for more!

While seeing my name jump from one standby list to another today, I thought of the much stricter consumer-protection laws in the European Union. There airlines are required to accommodate the consumer in case of delays, including weather problems. And yet, most of these airlines stay competitive and offer amazing deals (you can always find dirt cheap flights between European cities where you only pay the taxes and fees) to their consumers. Of course many go out of business, but that's the nature of the trade.

And meanwhile, our government takes our taxes to subsidize the losses of our airlines and sits idly by, even supporting, their daily indulgence in screwing the passenger every which way! Unbelievable!

Incompetence the Hague Style

2008-07-31T17:12:00.000-07:00

Today's initial appearance of the aged and exhausted Radovan Karadzic (his time on the run has not been kind to him) felt like a small consolation for the years of suffering he and his henchmen caused Bosnia. Today's short hearing disturbingly shows that the Hague prosecutors have not learned their lesson from the Milosevic trial: make it as short as possible. Milosevic's masterful prolonging of the process made the trial into a mockery and robbed the victims and historical justice of the final verdict. Milosevic may have died alone in a small, metal cell of the Hague tribunal, but he left this world engulfed in the mystery which he had worked tirelessly to build: was he indeed a victim of an international conspiracy? While the question seems ludicrous to most rational people, the question mark that marked the end of his life threw the whole Hague process into doubt.

Karadzic seems to intent to do exactly the same. First, he insisted on defending himself despite the fact he has "an invisible adviser" as he put it. This means he has a whole team of experienced Serbian lawyers who will be directing his defense behind the scenes. Secondly, the behavior of his lawyer and Karadzic himself made it clear that he intends to prolong the trial, a strategy that just might work given the fact that the UN mandate for the tribunal expires at the end of the year. For the Tribunal to continue its work past this deadline, another approval by the UN Security Council is needed and Russia has vowed to veto any attempt to prolong the jurisdiction of the tribunal, if only to spite the West. Karadzic knows this very well as it was shown on the night of his arrest when he said to one of the police officers guarding him: "If only I could have waited this out until the end of the year. The Tribunal would be shut, and I would turn myself in to the Serbian authorities."

This would not be so worrying if the Hague prosecutors were up to the task, and from what they have shown in the Milosevic trial and in the beginning of the Karadzic trial, they seem intent to screw this up! Even though they had 13 years to prepare a polished, proof-read indictment against Karadzic, the prosecution said today that it would "amend" the indictment, giving Karadzic 30 extra days to enter a plea! Just to enter a plea! And this was not even something Karadzic had orchestrated. It was the prosecution handing him extra time on a golden plate. Hopefully, the amending of the indictment means that they will try him for each charge separately (this way his siege of Sarajevo would be dealt with separately from the Srebrenica genocide), making it possible to bring out several verdicts, for each charge in the indictment. But even if this is so, why the hell did they wait until today to announce this!

In the meantime, as he laughs in the face of international justice and any sense of human decency, Karadzic will be enjoying the amenities of the Hague Hilton: daily access to a range of newspapers in Serbo-Croatian; a separate kitchen for him and his inmate buddies in case they want to prepare their own traditional Serbian meals and not eat Hague food; a personal doctor; and even a conjugal bedroom where his wife (or his Belgrade mistress) can come and see him any time they want; they can also call him from 9-5 each day.

I am strongly supportive of international bodies of justice, such as the Hague tribunal, but the thought of this trial turning into another legal mess with no end in sight makes me think that it might have been better if the Serbian security forces had dropped Karadzic in downtown Sarajevo rather than a Belgrade jail. Of course, after cutting his hair and shaving his beard. Legal niceties aside, but a part of me thinks that this might have been a more just ending.

5 Senate Races to Watch Out For

2008-07-30T17:36:00.001-07:00

There are several Senate races in November that will determine how healthy the Democratic majority in Congress will be starting next year. Most of these races are currently leaning Democrat and considering that they are in traditionally Republican states show the trouble the Republicans are in come November. Let's take them one by one:

1) Alaska. This should be a no-brainer for the Democrats as their Senator, Ted Stevens, was indicted yesterday on felony corruption charges. He has also vowed not to bow out of the race basically handing the Democrats his seat. Considering the fact he is running against the popular mayor of Anchorage Mark Begich, this race seems to be the surest bet for the Democrats in November. Today's poll: Begich 50%; Stevens 45%, but expect Stevens' number to go way down as the news of indictment against him sinks into the minds of Alaskans.

2) New Hampshire. The incumbent Republican (previously very popular) John Sununu is trailing his Democratic challenger Gene Shaheen 11 points (52-41%). Sununu represents the old New Hampshire, but the state has becoming a suburb of Boston in a way and has started leaning Democrat. This coupled with a horrible reputation the Republicans have right now bides well for the Democratic chances to pick up this seat.

3) Virginia (my personal favorite). The polls shows that the battle between the governors, Mark Warner (D) and Jim Gilmore (R) will be a devastating Republican defeat come November: Warner 59%, Gilmore 33%. Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg said of the race: "This is over even before it began. This is an absolute disaster for the Republicans." The state will also be interesting to watch in the presidential election especially if Obama picks Tim Kaine, current governor to be his VP or Jim Webb, the state's current Senator.

4) New Mexico. This is a battle between two Congressmen, Tom Udall (D) and Steve Pearce. Currently, Udall is leading Pearce by 28 points in the polls. The Republicans had a more moderate candidate running in the primaries, but her loss to Pearce has almost guaranteed a victory for the Democrats.

5) Colorado. Congressman Mark Udall is a Democrat and is running ahead of Republican Mark Schaffer 7 points (48-41%). Colorado has moved towards the Democrats in the past few years, electing a Democratic governor, a Senator, and giving a Congressional district to the Democrats. In a year such as this, when the Republican brand name is about as popular as Kevin Federline, this race seems like another promising chance for the Democrats.

Currently, the Democrats have 51 seats and to be filibuster-proof after the next election they need to have 60, so the magical number is 9. This is going to be hard to reach, but not impossible. There are several other states where the Democrats can pick up a seat: in Texas, the race seems shockingly close as the incumbent John Cornyn is only 4 points ahead of his Democratic challenger. Susan Collins (Maine), Gordon Smith (Oregon), Elizabeth Dole (N. Carolina), and Norm Coleman (Minnesota. Here Al Franken has ran a terrible campaign, however) are only favored by small margins over their opponents.

But even without a filibuster proof Senate, the Democrats will be given the reins of power come November (including the White House, hopefully). It was about time!

Karadzic in the Hague

2008-07-30T08:16:00.001-07:00

As the news broke this morning that Karadzic was transferred from Belgrade to the Hague, it seems as if a new chapter has been opened in the relations between Bosnia and Serbia. His extradition to the Hague coincided with a major decision by the Bosnian War Crimes Tribunal in Sarajevo that is now taking over some cases of the Hague Tribunal: the Sarajevo court sentenced seven Bosnian Serbs to sentences ranging from 38 to 42 years for their direct involvement in the Srebrenica killings. What is most encouraging is the muted reaction to these developments by the so-called supporters of Karadzic. Yes, there was some violence last night on the streets of Belgrade, but the scenes of scattered hooligans battling determined Serbian police looked more like an aftermath of a soccer match than an outbreak of nationalist-inspired violence. The forceful response of the Serbian police--as well as their impeccable protection of the US Embassy--bides well for the new Serbian government. What is most surprising is that this is all happening while the Serbian Interior Ministry is controlled by a Socialist Party (Milosevic's party) man. It seems that they are more determined than ever to move on beyond the horrific Milosevic legacy.

I have also observed the reaction in Bosnia with a sense of relief. A few days ago, a couple of thousand supporters of Karadzic gathered in the Sarajevo Serb suburb of Pale and staged a very peaceful protest. They protested for a few hours, and then went on home.

This is an important moment since it shows the pragmatism and de-ideologization of ordinary people who are struggling to make ends meet in a terrible economy. Dissatisfaction with politicians crosses ethnic boundaries as a whopping majority of Bosnians see themselves as being regularly screwed by their government(s). It is particularly telling that the Bosnian parliament just a few days ago, voted to increase the salaries of its representatives while the unemployment reaches 40%, average pension drops to $100, and an army of young people continuously lines up in front of foreign embassies looking for a way out.

Thus, it is not so much that people are finally dealing with the past, but that the past is being run over by the oppressive present. And this may not be such a bad thing!

Obama's Berlin Speech: "This is our Moment. This is Our Time."

2008-07-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

Nationalism as Therapy

2008-07-24T09:33:00.000-07:00

As more details emerge about Radovan Karadzic's double life during his time on the run, it becomes fascinatingly clear that for this man nationalism offered a way to fashion himself as a mythical Messiah of his own people. As I wrote in a previous post, prior to the war, Karadzic tried (unsuccessfully) to penetrate the ranks of the Bosnian-Yugoslav intelligentsia: he attended poetry workshops at Columbia, wrote and published poems, and fashioned himself as a Bohemian. Along with his business partner Momcilo Krajisnik (who later became his deputy President of the Bosnian Serb Republic and is also currently in the Hague) he became embroiled in several business scandals. Apparently, he and Krajisnik used business loans to build themselves lavish homes in the Sarajevo suburb of Pale, which later became the headquarters of his murderous army. Reflecting on his prewar life is essential to understanding why this man not only embraced nationalist myths, but lived them: nationalism served as therapy for his inferiority complex. It allowed him to become a Messiah and in the process destroy the place which had reminded him of his own mediocrity: Sarajevo.

During the war, he would frequently recite his prewar poems to foreign visitors, boasting how he had predicted that Bosnia would descend into hell. The former US ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmerman remembers that Karadzic's vocabulary was peppered with images of violence and horror. Karadzic never tried to hide this. In fact, he seemed to reach almost orgasmic levels of pleasure in boasting about the horror his troops were visiting upon the city of Sarajevo. In this Youtube clip, Karadzics hosts the Russian ultra-nationalist poet Limonov on the hills above Sarajevo, recites his "Sarajevo" poem from the 1980s in which he had "predicted" the massacre, and even invites the poet to shoot the sniper at the civilians in the city.

During this time, he fashioned himself as a direct descendant of Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic, the 19th century collector of Serbian folklore and the founder of modern Serbo-Croatian grammar. Although Vuk shares the last name with Radovan, there is no evidence that they are related. But in Karadzic's mind, the same Serbian blood flew through their veins, authorizing the 20th century Karadzic to act on behalf of the Serbian nation. As his troops shelled Sarajevo, Karadzic would often play gusle, the Serbian single-string instrument that had been played by Serbian folklorists while they recited myths from Serbian history.

In today's article about Karadzic's double life in Belgrade, one of Belgrade's daily newspapers recounts the stories of Karadzic coming to a small cafe in Belgrade during his hiding, taking up gusle, sitting below the picture of himself (which the nationalist owner had put up there not knowing that the real Karadzic was his frequent visitor), and playing for hours on an end, drinking the Serbian plum brandy.

Karadzic's disturbing story is illustrative of the way in which nationalism helps an individual find purpose in life. For Karadzic, it was a form of therapy (I use this term intentionally given the fact that Karadzic himself was a psychiatrist) that helped him transform himself from an anonymous mediocrity to a mythical figure (in the eyes of his supporters, of which there are many in Bosnia and Serbia). Yesterday's announcement that he would defend himself at the Hague trial is a sure sign that he will use the trial to perpetuate this image of himself.

But the fact that he will remain in prison for the rest of his pathetic life is sure to throw this man into the abyss of anonymity. This will be the most just punishment for a man who fashions himself a Messiah of his people.

Obama in Israel

2008-07-23T07:26:00.001-07:00

As our candidate touches down in Israel and the Palestinian territories, it is useful to remember that the only way the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will ever end peacefully is for the US to have a President who will sacrifice the possibility of his second term--even his political career--to pressure Israel into ending the occupation of the Palestinian territories, stopping the settlements on the West Bank, and acknowledging (if only symbolically and financially) the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their pre-1967 borders. Of course, the actual implementation of the latter is an impossibility, but it is essential for the US, Israel and the larger international community to recognize the historical injustice. This in turn would undercut the central message of Hamas--which thrives on the Palestinian sense of victimhood--and help consolidate the Palestinian peace movement.

However, the crazy process we put our candidates through before they reach the White House as well as the amount of historical guilt this country has (justifiably) for the Holocaust, does not bide well for the peace process. Obama's own statements in front of the Israeli lobby in which he supported an "undivided" and Jewish Jerusalem (and later smartly backtracked on) signal the continuation of US' policy of unconditionally supporting Israel no matter what it does, no matter how bluntly it violates international law, no matter how much it continues to oppress the Palestinians, and finally, no matter the extent to which it works against US interests in the Middle East.

Carter was willing to sacrifice his political capital in reaching a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. But Carter's timing was impeccable. He had two courageous leaders on both sides of the negotiating table: Menachim Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat with the latter eventually sacrificing his life for peace with Israel.

Thus, timing is not on Obama's side. Both, the Israelis and the Palestinians seem divided, their peace movements never weaker, and their leaders extremely ineffective. It would take an immense amount of boldness, intellectual honesty, and political courage for an Obama administration to throw itself into a genuine peace-process.

The boldness and political confidence we have seen from Obama on this trip gives me some hope, however.