Citizen G'kar: Musings on Earth

May 31, 2005

American Conservative Condemns Wolfowitz/Bush War

The next issue of the American Conservative takes a well deserved swipe at Paul Wolfowitz, the primary spokesman for invading Iraq post 9/11. It also notes an early hero who was forced to retire in the aftermath of standing up to Wolfowitz and telling Congress the truth, Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki. It seems some conservatives are awakening from their honeymoon inspired by a Republican dominated government.
Trigger Man
In the months preceding the U.S.-led invasion, with the ranks of those opposing the administration swelling, Wolfowitz figured prominently among the officials called upon to rebut any objections to war. Never has a deputy cabinet secretary played such a visible role in making the case for a policy so fraught with controversy. Cool, imperturbable, and relentlessly “on message,” Wolfowitz performed impressively. Only once did his mask of self-assurance slip: when the United States Army, in the person of its chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, ventured to say nay.


The clash between Shinseki and Wolfowitz received considerable media coverage. For some, it lives on as emblematic of the arrogance and over-confidence attributed to the Bush administration on the eve of war. But the full significance of this civil-military confrontation remains unappreciated. For Shinseki, an honorable soldier with few intellectual pretensions, was also in his own way the embodiment of specific forces, very much at odds with those that Wolfowitz had championed. Although couching his critique in green-eyeshade, bean-counting terms, the general set out to subvert the very project that represented the deputy defense secretary’s life’s work.


The administration, Shinseki told members of Congress, was badly underestimating the number of troops that pacifying Iraq was likely to require. Given that the requisite additional troops simply did not exist, Shinseki was implicitly arguing that the U.S. armed services were inadequate for the enterprise. Further, he was implying that invasion was likely to produce something other than a crisp, tidy decision; from a soldier’s viewpoint, a display of precision warfare was not likely to settle the matter. “Liberation” would leave loose ends. Unexpected and costly complications would abound.


In effect, Shinseki was offering a last-ditch defense of the military tradition that Wolfowitz was intent on destroying, a tradition that saw armies as fragile, that sought to husband military power, and that classified force as an option of last resort. The risks of action, Shinseki was suggesting, were far, far greater than the advocates for war had let on.


Shinseki’s critique elicited an immediate retaliatory response. One could safely ignore the complaints of liberal Democrats or the New York Times, not to mention those coming from a largely inchoate antiwar movement. But if the brass openly opposed the war, they could halt the march on Baghdad even before it began. Besides, how could Shinseki dare even to raise the question of an occupation? Wolfowitz was already on the record as declaring that the United States was “committed to liberating the people of Iraq, not to becoming an occupation force.” Shinseki had to be discredited then and there, lest the opportunity to validate the new American way of war be lost forever.


So the normally unflappable Wolfowitz responded with uncharacteristic brusqueness, caustically dismissing the general’s estimate as “wildly off the mark.” For his dissent, Shinseki paid dearly. Publicly rebuked and immediately marginalized, he soon retired, his fate an object lesson for other senior military professionals. (The episode affirmed the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz theory of civil-military relations: heap lavish public praise on soldiers in the ranks while keeping the generals and admirals on an exceedingly short leash.)


In the end, Wolfowitz got his war. Operation Iraqi Freedom provided the first salvo in an open-ended campaign to transform the Islamic world. Should the conduct of that campaign require the anticipatory use of force, it also provided ample precedent to do just that.

[...]
In its trial run, the doctrine of preventive war—Wolfowitz’s handiwork as much as the president’s—has produced liberation and occupation, a crisp demonstration of “shock and awe” and a protracted, debilitating insurgency, the dramatic toppling of a dictator and horrifying evidence implicating American soldiers in torture and other abuses. The Iraq War has now entered its third year with no end in sight, taxing U.S. forces to the limit. The ongoing conflict has divided the nation like no event since Vietnam. Like Vietnam, it is sapping our economic strength and has already done immeasurable damage to our standing in the world. Despite expectations of Saddam’s overthrow paving the way for what some expected to be a foreign policy of moral incandescence, the United States finds itself obliged once again to compromise its ideals, cozying up to little Saddams like Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf and Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov.


The forces that Paul Wolfowitz helped unleash—a dangerous combination of hubris and naivete—are exacting an ever mounting cost. His considerable exertions notwithstanding, truth in matters of statecraft remains implacably gray. Even assuming honorable intentions on the part of those who conceived this war, wielding power in Iraq has left the United States up to its ankles, if not up to its knees, in guilt.


In his solitude, General Shinseki can await the final judgment of history with considerable confidence. At the pinnacle of professional success, Paul Wolfowitz must look forward to a different verdict that will be anything but kind.


Sanitizing MEK To Promote Regime Change in Iran

Since the Bush Administration has blown their Iraq policy, further isolated the US, strengthened Iran via it's new ally Iraq with whom they are building a a model relationship built on economic cooperation. In order to control Iraq, they have to destabilized Iran. They have been actively attempting since late last year. They've been probing air defenses in Iran. The Senate Intelligence Committee has been discussing Iran since the early this year at least.
Yet, the Administration has little credibility about military matters these days. So they need to create cover. IPC is the means to the end. One can be sure there are Neo-cons all over this plan. The plan is to build up and support Saddam's personal Iranian insurgents, the Mujahedeen e-Khalq Organization (MEK), to act as US surrogates in Iran and probably support them with Special Forces already in Iran and air support in a scenario very much like how Afghanistan was destabilized. MEK is currently on the US terrorist lists.
Lately the Sunni minority in Iraq has been blaming the US for marginalizing Sunnis. Could it be that the US has changed tactics, recognizing the US has failed in its objective to place a friendly Arab democracy in the Middle East, they instead hope to use the budding civil war as a way to occupy the Muslims in a conflict amongst themselves? The Sunnis and the Shiites have been rivals for centuries. The Sunnis fear a Shiite dominated Iraq and may begin actively supporting the insurgency now that its turning fratricidal. Jihadis from all over the Muslim world will join the battle in Iraq if it escalates.
Iran Policy Committee (IPC): U.S. Policy Options on Iran
By calling for change in Tehran based on Iranians instead of Americans, IPC stresses the potential for a third alternative: Keep open diplomatic and military options, while providing a central role for the Iranian opposition to facilitate regime change.


Iran is emerging as the primary threat against the United States and its allies: Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons, continuing support for and involvement with terrorist networks, publicly-stated opposition to the Arab-Israel peace process, disruptive role in Iraq, expansionist radical ideology, and its denial of basic human rights to its own population are challenges confronting U.S. policymakers.


May 30, 2005

State-led murder and rape of villagers in Darfur uncovered

Scotsman.com- State-led murder and rape of villagers in Darfur uncovered
AU monitors have collected photographic evidence of Sudanese helicopter gunships in action attacking villages, and their reports conclude that the Sudanese government has systematically breached the peace deals that it signed to placate the United Nations Security Council.


Reports from Darfur indicate that air attacks on villages have continued amid defiance of UN resolutions calling on the Khartoum regime to disarm the Janjaweed, with the latest helicopter attack in south Darfur reported to have taken place on 13 May as the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, was preparing to visit the province.


Pictures taken by AU monitors document attacks by a Sudanese helicopter gunship on the village of Labado in December, a month after the Sudanese government gave an assurance that there would be no more such attacks. The Sudanese government markings are clearly visible on the tailfin of the helicopter.


The village was visited by Mr Annan last week as he toured the region to see for himself whether anything had changed a year after he first visited Darfur.


The government in Khartoum has consistently denied using air attacks against villagers, insisting that they have only been used defensively against attacks by rebel forces.


The US and British governments have accepted Sudanese assurances that there have been no air attacks since February, but the anti-genocide Aegis Trust - which is campaigning for an enlarged AU force to be sent to Darfur - claims it has received reports of a bombing raid involving an Antonov aircraft on 23 March and a helicopter attack in south Darfur on 13 May witnessed by AU monitors.

Why would the Bush administration believe an administration that has routinely lied to the world? There is a reason. I talked about it in early March.
There is a reason why the Bush Administration has been all talk and no action on Darfur. At first they thought it was Muslims killing Christians. Then they found out that was only in the case of the civil war between north and south. US diplomas very quickly got involved in settling that long standing dispute, especially since the southern Sudan is oil rich and dominated by Christian Africans. Oil and Christians in trouble are priorities for this Administration.It turns out the conflict in Darfur involved Muslim Arabs supported by the Sudanese Government killing Muslim Blacks. That isn't a priority for the Bush administration. Besides, the Sudanese government just gave the US a new oil trading partner. What's a few black Muslims when there's oil at stake?

Now finally two months later peacekeepers have witnessed that the genocide continues. Will Bush do anything now other than to support African Union peacekeepers? AU is requesting $723 million to support it's mission. I'm betting Bush will do no more than what he has to to avoid criticism.

Anyone Doubt Iran's Intention for the Bomb?

Here is a great compilation of articles from various sources from The Agonist.
Der Spiegel - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf rules a country on the front lines in the war against terror. For years he has walked the difficult tight-rope of pacifying a Muslim population and maintaining a close alliance with the US. SPIEGEL spoke with him about anti-Americanism, the hunt for Osama bin Laden and whether Iran should be allowed to go nuclear.

BBC - Pakistan has denied that President Pervez Musharraf told a German magazine that Iran was "very anxious" to have a nuclear bomb.

Reuters - Iran demanded an explanation on Sunday of comments attributed to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf saying Iran was eager to develop a nuclear bomb.

Makes you wonder what the real truth is. Sometimes the context of the interview tells the truth. Here is the incriminating excerpt:
Print - SPIEGEL Interview with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf - SPIEGEL ONLINE
SPIEGEL: Pakistan justified its going nuclear with the imbalance of power in South Asia after India had gone nuclear. Iran is setting out to break the monopoly of Israel in the Middle East.


Musharraf: But Iran doesn't have a border with Israel. We have a big border with India which is a real threat for us.


"You in there Osama?" Tora Bora was the closest bin Laden has come to being captured after the September 11 attacks.


"You in there Osama?" Tora Bora was the closest bin Laden has come to being captured after the September 11 attacks.
SPIEGEL: The US is trying hard to protect the world from Iran going nuclear. Would you support a pre-emptive strike?


Musharraf: In the present environment it would be disastrous because it would agitate the Muslim world. Why keep opening new fronts?


SPIEGEL: What would you suggest for keeping the Iranians from producing the bomb?


Musharraf: I can't say. They are very keen on building the bomb.


SPIEGEL: As Pakistan was.


Musharraf: Yes, we were keen. Nobody can accept a threat to its existence. Therefore we are very proud to have nuclear weapons.


SPIEGEL: Did Pakistan help Iran and North Korea to go nuclear?


Musharraf: An individual from Pakistan did.
SPIEGEL: His name is A.Q. Khan and it is very hard for people like us to accept that he indulged in a clandestine enterprise without anybody in Pakistan being aware of it.


Musharraf: That is exactly what happened. When India went nuclear in 1974, Dr. A.Q. Khan was brought in (to Pakistan). He came from Holland. He is only an expert in enriching uranium, bringing it to weapons grade. He is not an expert in making nuclear bombs. He started establishing the process. This had to be kept secret from the world because otherwise the world would not have allowed it. For reasons of secrecy, A.Q. Khan was given total autonomy. He was doing a job nobody else knew about except for the President, the army chief and the scientists.


SPIEGEL: And you -- when did you become aware of what was going on?


Musharraf: During my career in the army I was never involved in nuclear affairs. I came in as army chief in 1998, in 1999 I became President. I realized that this man was doing something wrong. Nobody was checking. I removed him in January 2001, much before 9/11 because, as my intelligence told me, he was behaving suspiciously on two or three occasions. To remove him was the most difficult job. He was a national hero. I organized the custodial system.


SPIEGEL: What was A.Q. Khan driven by? Greed?


Musharraf: Greed, ego and dreams, because he is not religious. That I know. And in any case, North Korea is certainly not an Islamic country.

The context says to me Musharraf knows Iran wants the bomb add made the faux paux by sharing the truth rather than the politically correct answer. And just how would Musharraf know so much about Iran's intentions? Because he knows all about Kahn's interactions with Iran. He speaks confidently about his knowledge, telling the truth.
He only denies it later because he has back channel communications with Iran and doesn't want to jeopardize them with the fickle actions of the US with India. Certainly, these back channel communications are not a recent development with the "strategic" alliance with the US. I suspect that Pakistani intelligence knew all about Kahn's activities while it happened with it's tacit support.

May 29, 2005

The Lure of Opium Wealth Is a Potent Force in Afghanistan

The Lure of Opium Wealth Is a Potent Force in Afghanistan
Like a frustrated hunter, the head of the local anti-drug squad keeps snapshots of the ones who got away. One photo shows a prisoner wearing a flat, round pakol hat, standing in front of 10 pounds of opium packaged in plastic bags laid out on a table. Lt. Nyamatullah Nyamat took the picture on the February day he arrested the suspect. Hours later, the man was freed.


The stocky, plain-spoken cop glumly tossed another photo onto a desk in his basement office as if playing a losing hand of cards. In this one, a man in a white pillbox cap is handcuffed to a police officer and standing next to 62 pounds of opium. A local judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison. A higher court ordered his release.


One of Nyamat's biggest catches, arrested with 114 pounds of heroin, a derivative of opium, hadn't even appeared in court when the local prosecutor let him go in late March. Nyamat said that was normal in Kunduz, a hub on one of the world's busiest drug-smuggling routes.


Three and a half years after the United States led an invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime, the United Nations and the U.S. government warn that the country is in danger of becoming a narco-state controlled by traffickers. The State Department recently called the Afghan drug trade "an enormous threat to world stability." The United Nations estimates that Afghanistan produces 87% of the world's opium.

Colin Powell warned Bush about Iraq with famous words, "You break it, you own it." Now it appears that he has not only broke Iraq but Afghanistan. Typically, Bush blames everyone else, and tells the world it's their responsibility.

Bush Protects Cuban Terrorist

Bush's war on terrorism is only against those he disagrees with. Cuban immigrants who helped give the Florida vote to Bush see this man as a freedom fighter. Freedom fighters blow up airplanes?
the Daily Irrelevant - Blog Archive - Venezuela
A supporter of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez holds a poster that portrays U.S. President George W. Bush as a devil during a march against terrorism in Caracas May 28, 2005. The U.S. rejected on Friday Venezuela’s first move to extradite a Cuban exile wanted for an airliner bombing, in a case that could challenge the U.S. commitment to fight all forms of terrorism.


BBC NEWS | Venezuela rallies over Cuba exile


Mr Posada Carriles is in US custody on suspected immigration violations. The ex-CIA employee denies involvement in the bombing that killed 73 people on the flight from Caracas to Havana. The naturalised Venezuelan citizen is wanted by both Cuba and Venezuela in connection with the attack.


Supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took to the streets of the capital, blowing whistles and chanting anti-US slogans. The BBC's Iain Bruce in Caracas says there was good humour and dancing, but despite the festive mood among protesters it is clear that many people feel strongly about the issue.


Luis Posada Carriles denies involvement in the airliner bombing. Some accused US President George W Bush of double standards. "Bush is protecting a terrorist while he is supposedly fighting against terrorism - that's hypocrisy," Pedro Caldera said.


Mr Posada Carriles was charged last week with illegal entry into the US. The 77-year-old faces a hearing at a US immigration court on 13 June, at which he is expected to apply for asylum. On Friday the US state department said it had rejected Venezuela's initial request for Mr Posada Carriles to be detained with a view to extradition, because this had not been backed up by adequate evidence. Now the government in Caracas has announced it will be handing over the full 700 page extradition request on Tuesday.


Mr Posada Carriles was twice acquitted by Venezuelan courts of plotting to bomb the plane. He escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 while awaiting a trial on appeal. The US says it will not deport Mr Posada Carriles to any country that would hand him over to Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba. Caracas says it will not hand Mr Posada Carriles over, and Mr Castro has said he will be happy to see him tried in Venezuela.


Intensity of Brinksmanship Increases with North Korea

The US continues to stoke the fires on the Korean peninsula, contrary to any of the wishes of surrounding nations. The US has repositioned their premier fighter the F-115 to South Korea, directly threatening a pre-emptive strike. The B2 bomber wing and two more Aegis equipped ships have been repositioned to the China Sea. It's been clear from the beginning the Bush Administration is willing to fight the North Koreans to the last South Korean.
I tend to give world leaders more credit than most. When I see a cohesive foreign policy initiative by any country that seems to make no sense, I look between the lines. The Neo-con influence on Bush has led to a highly aggressive foreign policy that appears to attempt to control world events by taking pre-emptive military actions and acting as a catalyt by provoking the actions of others that will will create a more favorable political climate for Bush policies. In other words, the Bush Administration sees the world from a grand perspective. Whenever the world doesn't see it their way, the administration is willing to manipulate the situation to the make the world into how they expect it to be. They've got it all figured out, so all they have to do is get the enemy to show their hand and support from allies will come their way.
This is cynical arrogance at it's reckless worst. If the world isn't acting as you expect, manipulate it into doing what you want. The assumption that the world is better off in a more confrontational stance is reckless at best.
The Bush Administration is again turning the screws on the North Korea. Here is an excerpt from the LA Times:
By severing some of the few remaining U.S. ties with North Korea in recent days, the Bush administration appears to be trying to further isolate the Pyongyang regime over its pursuit of nuclear weapons, analysts say.


Wednesday's suspension of a Pentagon program to recover the remains of U.S. soldiers killed in the Korean War puts an end to one of the few regular channels of face-to-face contact between Americans and North Koreans. It also cuts off a source of hard currency for the communist nation's army, which was being paid millions to assist in the search for remains.


Also this week, the U.S. refused to renew the contract of the American executive director of an international consortium in charge of supplying energy to North Korea.

[...]
"They couldn't kill the project outright because that would require a consensus among the board members, so they are essentially decapitating it by getting rid of Kartman," Snyder said. Kartman will stay on until August under a month-to-month contract.


The reactor project has always been unpopular with the administration, which saw it as a capitulation to North Korean blackmail during the Clinton administration.


In contrast, the 9-year-old Pentagon program to recover remains from the 1950-53 Korean War had broad conservative support and survived numerous vicissitudes in U.S.-North Korea dealings.

[...]
One North Korea analyst based in Washington said the decision was likely to be interpreted by Pyongyang as a sign that the administration was contemplating a preemptive attack.


"In the hypothetical event that there were a military strike, any POW/MIA team would be at great risk of being held hostage," said the analyst, who asked not to be quoted by name.


Other analysts said the suspension might have more to do with concerns that the North Korean military was pocketing too much money for helping in the recovery operations.


There have been accusations that the North was overcharging for labor; demanding expensive vehicles, equipment and gasoline; and often leading recovery teams to dubious sets of remains.

Things couldn't be much worse on the Korean peninsula. Bush's policies has led to a nuclear powered North Korea, the worst relations between the US and South Korea than ever and now more provocation by the US. Seems as if they are forcing the hand of North Korea? Here is an analysis from The Agonist:
In recent weeks, with the first US charges that N. Korea was getting ready to test one of its nuclear bombs, the variation of the "sucker strategy" heard most often is that in fact, the Bush Administration not only wants the DPRK to test a nuclear weapon, it desperately needs the DPRK to test, since the US 6 Party policy has utterly collapsed.


-- that theory is explained this way: there are no credible "sticks" for Bush, and not just because of the universal assumption that the US is "pinned down" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if the US has force available (hey, we just sent over 15 Stealth...and who knows where our boomers might be), South Korean president Roh has said he won't let the US attack N. Korea without his government's permission, and he's indicated that South Korean aid to the North will continue up to, but perhaps not past, the point of a nuclear test; China has publicly warned the US not to attack, along with the DPRK not to test, and said it won't support any "UN strategy" by the US; Russia indicates much the same thing.


Add up all that and what do you get? That the "last chance" the US has for China and South Korea coming over to the US hard line approach to N. Korea is if Kim Jong-il goes ahead and tests (or attacks something, etc.).


-- ergo, it is argued, the "logic" of the US rhetoric and actions is that the Bush Administration is trying to push N. Korea into testing/doing something stupid and nasty. Some DOD analysts have taken to calling this the "B'rer Rabbit" strategy, after the old Southern folk tale about the smart rabbit who escapes his tormenters by begging "please don't throw me into that briar patch".


By this scenario, the "briar patch" is that the US hardliners are willing to risk everything on one dramatic throw of the dice...oh, we left out a popular item in the original, 2001-2 version of this strategy...that VP Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other advocates of national missile defense "needed" the alleged N. Korean ICBM threat to justify billions for NMD (not to mention co-production with Japan).

If this scenario is right, the Bush Administration is trying to manipulate world events, heat up the tensions on the Korean peninsula until North Korea does something sufficiently provocative to attempt to bring China, Russia, and South Korea closer to US views. Risking war to pressure North Korea?
It's apparent the Administration sees that they are in a win win situation. They figure, if war breaks out, the problem of North Korea will be solved because they'll be beaten. Obviously they believe China won't enter the war and North Korea's multimillion man Armed Forces are not sufficiently effective to do much damage to the South. Apparently they believe that even if the North does use it's bombs, they'll lose. And of course all the casualties will be South Korean.
But why wouldn't China enter the war, at least to a limited extent. Military support for NK could prevent them from going nuclear. China also has internal political and economic problems that will damage it's economic growth in the long run. Their population is restive angry and busting for a fight. Their economy is handicapped by being dependent on the US trade imbalence. Bush is working on improving that trade imbalence at the expense of the Chinese worker. And if a world recession returns, as seems increasingly likely, China's worker will suffer because of the dearth of internal demand on it's own products.
However, a war time economy produced by a regional conflict on the Korean peninsula would create massive internal demand for Chinese products. Loss of demand for it's exports seems inevitable. China needs to keep it's restive population employed and improving it's lot, as well as venting it's rage on external enemies to deflect anger from the Chinese Communist Party. A limited regional war would greatly benefit China in the long run. China tends to think long-range, unlike the US. Time is on it's side, if the government can survive the next decade or so.

May 28, 2005

The Hidden Cost of Health

Healthcare is topic close to heart, my own and everyone elses. But it is increasingly becoming clear that we cannot sustain our health system as it is. The trouble is none of our elected officials seem to want to tackle the problem.
Bush's solution is to simply cut healthcare. Reducing the Medicaid budget doesn't really cut healthcare at all, it just shifts the costs to overhead in local hospital emergency rooms. I wrote about this earlier:
The disabled are often faced with chosing between paying for food and shelter and medical care. The unemployed and the underemployed have no health insurance. All of these folks delay any medical care until its an emergency. Emergency care is MUCH more expensive than preventive care. And our emergency rooms are full of people who have no insurance and for the most part are not eligible for government support. Hospitals find themselves offering a huge proportion of their budgets paying for this free care. On top of that, government pays a discounted rate for all its services, a rate that does not cover for the actual cost of the service. Private insurance pays a premium fee to help hospital covers their losses in free treatment and to subsidise government discounts. Taken together, this amounts to a big part of the added expense.

Today, I happened upon proof that the soaring number of people without insurance are showing up in our hospital emergency rooms:
Visits to U.S. emergency rooms jumped 26 percent in the past decade, officials announced today. The jump was most pronounced among older Americans, many who don't have insurance.


Meanwhile, the number of facilities able to handle emergencies dropped.


Visits to emergency departments, called EDs, rose from 90.3 million in 1993 to 114 million in 2003, according to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The 26 percent increase compares to a 12.3 percent increase in the country's population.


Medicaid patients were four times more likely to seek treatment at an ED than those with private insurance.

Putting the above together with the data below creates some very interesting insights into the consequences of leaving people without health insurnance.
According to the Institute of Medicine, lack of health insurance already "causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States." Since President Bush took office the number of Americans who are uninsured has swelled by more than 5 million people.

Our swelling number of citizens without insurance and those on Medicaid are getting a large proportion of their healthcare in ERs. The government pays for those with Medicaid, it's roughly a 50/50 share between the states and the Federal government. But Bush's plan is cut a large number of people off of the Medicaid roles.
So, who pays for those without health insurance who come to ERs? Sure, a number of people without insurance are employed. They leave the hospital deeply in debt for a long time. Then there are those who won't ever pay a cent because they have no money or employment. Who pays for them?
Hospitals make out by putting unpaid care into their overhead, like any other business. The result is the cost of healthcare goes up.
So the taxpayers pay anyway. Meanwhile, 18,000 people without healthcare die unnecessarily every year.
There are two solutions to the dilemna in healthcare. We could leave the poor to die in the streets, or we can adopt a system like France, Germany or Canada.

May 27, 2005

The Housing Bubble Could Burst

Paul Krugman, the economist Op-Ed columnist for the NY Times, comments about the latest Morgan Stanley advice about housing as an investment. Even the optimists are looking at the outlandish increase in housing prices especially in California and Florida. Any real market correction in these states will certainly depress prices at least for a while nationwide. The risks of recession will renew.
Running Out of Bubbles - New York Times
Remember the stock market bubble? With everything that's happened since 2000, it feels like ancient history. But a few pessimists, notably Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley, argue that we have not yet paid the price for our past excesses.


I've never fully accepted that view. But looking at the housing market, I'm starting to reconsider.


In July 2001, Paul McCulley, an economist at Pimco, the giant bond fund, predicted that the Federal Reserve would simply replace one bubble with another. "There is room," he wrote, "for the Fed to create a bubble in housing prices, if necessary, to sustain American hedonism. And I think the Fed has the will to do so, even though political correctness would demand that Mr. Greenspan deny any such thing."

[...]
Many home purchases are speculative; the National Association of Realtors estimates that 23 percent of the homes sold last year were bought for investment, not to live in. According to Business Week, 31 percent of new mortgages are interest only, a sign that people are stretching to their financial limits.


The important point to remember is that the bursting of the stock market bubble hurt lots of people - not just those who bought stocks near their peak. By the summer of 2003, private-sector employment was three million below its 2001 peak. And the job losses would have been much worse if the stock bubble hadn't been quickly replaced with a housing bubble.


So what happens if the housing bubble bursts? It will be the same thing all over again, unless the Fed can find something to take its place. And it's hard to imagine what that might be. After all, the Fed's ability to manage the economy mainly comes from its ability to create booms and busts in the housing market. If housing enters a post-bubble slump, what's left?


Mr. Roach believes that the Fed's apparent success after 2001 was an illusion, that it simply piled up trouble for the future. I hope he's wrong. But the Fed does seem to be running out of bubbles.


DoD Personnel Impersonated State Dept Officials and FBI in Guantanamo

American Civil Liberties Union : Defense Department Personnel Impersonated State Department Officials in Guantanamo Interrogations, FBI Documents Show
Defense Department interrogators, possibly on instructions from high-level officials, went to great lengths to avoid being held accountable for the use of unlawful interrogation methods," said Jameel Jaffer, a staff attorney with the ACLU. "Apparently Defense Department personnel were willing to use torture but they wanted others to be held responsible for it."


In December 2004, the FBI released documents stating that Defense Department interrogators impersonated FBI agents in order to avoid being held responsible for the use of "torture techniques." The new documents provide the first indication that Defense Department interrogators impersonated State Department officials as well.

The truth is beginning to come out. Rumsfeld fully intended to use torture and attempted to cover it up. By setting up Colin Powell and the FBI to take the fall, he would advance his agenda to centralize all national security functions in the DOD. I suspect Rummy was running interference for the Whitehouse with full knowledge of Bush.

May 26, 2005

What's the Real Story Behind McCain's Move?

While I'm not a McCain supporter, I do recognize this man's stateman-like actions. I do believe McCain believed in the cause of preserving the filibuster. But did he think he might parlay himself into a leading candidate for President too? You bet!
Whatever happened to the secular Republicans? Could McCain wanting to join with Spector to contain the influence of the Christian rightwing extremists? I think that is exactly what he has in mind.
Here is a bit of speculation about the impact on the debate within the Republican party.
Salon.com News | McCain vs. Frist
When Sen. John McCain stood before the microphone Monday night and announced the moderates' deal that averted the nuclear option, Majority Leader Bill Frist was nowhere to be found. He wasn't at the press conference. He wasn't a party to the deal. Despite orchestrating the showdown over the filibuster, Frist was left out of the compromise, looking like a fringe player in McCain's show.


If the confrontation over judicial nominees was an early battle among Republicans with an eye on the next presidential election, McCain, a leading centrist candidate, faced off against Frist, who is positioning himself as the conservative's conservative. And by any measure, McCain clearly won. But the filibuster drama may have exposed a larger truth about GOP efforts to succeed George W. Bush in 2008 -- neither McCain nor Frist is well-positioned to win the Republican nomination.


Indeed, the moderates' compromise may serve to undermine both politicians' White House ambitions. It all comes down to the right-wing constituency of the Republican Party. "No one had surfaced as the clear social conservative candidate even before this, and this serves to muddy it up that much more," Republican strategist Ed Goeas said. What's missing from the 2008 candidates, Goeas said, is "a Ronald Reagan conservative."


May 25, 2005

The Real Problems with $50 Oil

The Real Problems with $50 Oil
We now appear to be heading toward a replay of the early 1980s when a widening trade deficit and a precipitous fall of the dollar triggered the 1987 collapse of the equity markets. Greenspan's strategy of reducing market regulation by substituting it with crisis intervention is merely swapping the extension of the boom for increased severity of the bust down the road. Greenspan appears to be looking to $50 oil to sustain his debt bubble. While $50 oil is not a problem in the long run, it could give Greenspan a super-size headache if it serves merely to fuel more debt. Greenspan started his tenure at the Fed with a market crash. Will the wizard of irrational exuberance end his tenure with another market crash?

Sobering news from a New York economic analyst in an article of an on-line newspaper controlled by China.
One might speculate that China accepts the coming downward correction in it's growth fed by the trade imbalance predicted by Roach and is waiting for and perhaps hoping for a crash to improve it's long range economic prospects. After all, China holds a huge proportion of the notes from US deficit borrowing. It's influence on the US in the future could parallel the influence the World Bank on Argentina. Does that make you wonder where the heck Bush's brain went?

When Can We Expect to Withdraw From Iraq?

Informed Comment
Let me just step back from the daily train wreck news from the region to complain back that there aren't any short-term, easy solutions to the problems in Iraq. The US military cannot defeat the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement any time soon for so many reasons that they cannot all be listed.

Cole makes a very convincing case, one you won't hear in mainstream media off the opinion pages. You can't find a prominent news analyst who dares rock the boat. His article is well worth the read. Here are his points summarized:
1. The insurection has strong support of perhaps 80% of all Sunni's in the Sunni areas of Iraq. Those areas include 4 million persons.
2. Some 250,000 tons of munitions are missing and presumed in use by the insurgency. They have more funds available to them for supplies than they can practically use in the foreseeable future.
3. There are too few US troops even with the support of the new Iraqi forces. 70,000 fighting forces face a force significantly larger albiet less organized. But this force represents a signficant number for a guerilla war. For example, in Anbar province, there are 10,000 US troops facing some 40,000 insurgent irregulars with double that actively supporting them. The US has consistently underestimated the size and abilities of the force they face.
4. The insurgents have great intelligence advantages including but not limited to: knowledge of local sympathizers, clans, terrain and urban quarters, and speaking Arabic. They have numerous sources of intelligence imbedded in the Iraqi police and army.
5. The US in relative terms hasn't a clue and has more sources of disinformation than useful intelligence, "do not have the knowledge base or skills to conduct effective counter-insurgency." And as a largely Christian country occupying a Muslim country, "they are widely disliked and mistrusted outside Kurdistan."
6. "US military tactics, of replying to attacks with massive force, have alienated ever more Sunni Arabs as time has gone on.... The Americans have lost effective control everywhere in the Sunni Arab areas."
7. Iraqi troops are not an effective force and will not be so for at least 3 to 5 years.
8. "The guerrilla tactic of fomenting civil war among Iraq's ethnic communities, which met resistance for the first two years, is now bearing fruit." Shiite death squads are increasingly active and there is open warfare between Sunni's and Shiites in Telafar.
9. The election and resulting government has increased the chances for civil war.
10. "The quality of leadership in Washington is extremely bad. George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and outgoing Department of Defense officials Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, have turned in an astonishingly poor performance in Iraq. Their attempt to demonstrate US military might has turned into a showcase for US weakness in the face of Islamic and nationalist guerrillas, giving heart to al-Qaeda and other unconventional enemies of the United States."
11. "In the long run, say 15 years, the Iraqi Sunnis will probably do as the Lebanese Maronites did, and finally admit that they just cannot remain in control of the country and will have to compromise. That is, if there is still an Iraq at that point. "

There Are Some Statesmen in the Republican Party

Imagine that, there are some statesmen in the Republican party. A few are willing to break with Republican leadership to lead for the good of the Country, rather than blindly following Bush and pandering to the Christian rightwing extremists.
G.O.P. Senator Issues Letter Urging Vote Against Bolton - New York Times
The Ohio Republican whose opposition to John R. Bolton nearly stalled his nomination in committee circulated a letter on Tuesday urging colleagues to vote against Mr. Bolton when his name reaches the Senate floor, possibly this week.


The renewed opposition from the senator, George V. Voinovich, was addressed to all his colleagues, but it was aimed particularly at fellow Republicans in a chamber in which the party holds a 55-to-44 majority. At least five Republicans would have to join Mr. Voinovich in opposing Mr. Bolton's nomination as United Nations ambassador in order to defeat it.
In the letter, Mr. Voinovich said that while he had been "hesitant to push my views on my colleagues" during his six years in the Senate, he felt "compelled to share my deep concerns" about the nomination.
"In these dangerous times, we cannot afford to put at risk our nation's ability to successfully wage and win the war on terror with a controversial and ineffective ambassador to the United Nations," Mr. Voinovich wrote. He urged colleagues to "put aside our partisan agenda and let our consciences and our shared commitment to our nation's best interests guide us."


The White House remains strongly in favor of Mr. Bolton's nomination, and it is unusual for a Republican to break ranks so publicly with President Bush.

Meanwhile, seven Senators from the Republican Party and seven from the Democrats agreed to end the controversy over the filibuster. All of these Senators will take their lumps for this. They deserve credit for heroes of the hour for preventing a Constitutional crisis and further erosion of credibility in government.
The Democrats were: Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Sen. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Sen. Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana.
The Republicans were: Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John W. Warner of Virginia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, and Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine.
Thank you Honorable Senators. What the agreement was still is a closely guarded secret. Here is some speculation about what the deal might be.
Disarmament in the Senate
The pact they forged will preserve the minority's right to filibuster - block a bill or nomination unless a supermajority of 60 senators votes to proceed. To get there, the seven Democrats involved in the negotiations paid a high price - allowing the nominations of three of President Bush's most controversial nominees to the federal Courts of Appeals to go through to an up-or-down vote that they will undoubtedly win.


That would mean, among other things, that Janice Rogers Brown of California will be joining the critical Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Readers will recall that Justice Brown has called the New Deal a "socialist revolution" and praised a series of early 20th-century Supreme Court decisions in which worker health and safety laws were struck down as infringing on the rights of business. In her current job, she once wrote a dissent in which she claimed that ordering a rental car company supervisor to stop calling Hispanic employees by racial epithets was a violation of the company's free speech rights.


In return, the seven Republicans appear to have promised - or at least vaguely indicated - that they will protect the Democrats' right to stop progress on two other nominees, including William Myers III, a former lobbyist for mining interests who would otherwise end up serving on a California appeals court that considers many critical environmental cases. Two other extremely controversial nominations that are not as far down the pipeline may not ever reach the Senate floor. Both sides agreed that they would not support any future filibuster on judicial nominees except in "extraordinary circumstances," which were left undefined.


At bottom, the agreement is about postponing any ultimate showdown until the president is called on to nominate a Supreme Court justice. That seems sensible. The Supreme Court is what everyone has had in mind during all this jockeying over procedure.


May 24, 2005

More Economic Think Tanks Warn the World of US Policies

We're on brink of ruin, OECD warns - theage.com.au
If governments do not steer economies back on course to correct imbalances, the markets will eventually do it for them.


The chances are increasing that the global economy will suffer a hard landing, with currency markets savagely dumping the US dollar and throwing much of the world into recession, the OECD has warned.

[...]
"A large drop in the dollar would substantially damp the modest expansion projected for the euro area and Japan, especially if accompanied by falls in bond, share and house prices."


As an example, the OECD estimates that a 30 per cent greenback devaluation would throw Europe and Japan into recession, reducing their growth to roughly zero for two years, and wipe 10 per cent off the value of Wall Street stocks.

[...]
The report comes as ANZ Bank chief economist Saul Eslake has warned that the US current account deficit is unlikely to be fixed without a recession.

The coming correction won't be pretty. How is that only the rest of the world seems to know and/or talk about the precarious condition of the world economy? It would appear that again, mainstream news sources have been effectively silenced about anything controversial.

May 23, 2005

Budgeting for Poverty

I've never understood why Republicans could defend minimum wage as it applies to adults trying to support themselves. The numbers never add up. Here is a compelling demonstration. Click here for a video version of the text below.
Budgeting for Poverty
The federal government says a family of four making $18,810 a year is living in poverty.

But how far does $18,810 go in America today?

How do you budget? What do you leave out?

You make the hard choices.

Housing? In America, a family of four making less than $19,000 a year
will spend on average $5,274 annually for the most basic of
shelter.

$18,810
- 5,274
13,536

Utilities? To keep a family of four warm and secure, the average
expense for utilities and public services runs $2,350 a year.

$13,536
- 2,350
11,186

Transportation? A family at the poverty line will spend $4,852 a year to own and maintain a used car, and fill it with the gas and oil
needed to go to work, to day care, to the store, wherever.

$11,186
- 4,852
6,334

Food? Even with public assistance such as food stamps, families
making less than $19,000 will spend $4,815 a year for food
at home and away.

$6,334
- 4,815
1,519

Health Care? Even if an employer contributes part of the costs of health insurance, a family of four at the poverty line would still pay on average $793 a year for health and medical expenses. The cost of not having health insurance, however, could be devastating.

$1,519
- 793
726

Child Care? The costs in a metropolitan-area child care center for two children five and under can reach over $13,000 a year.
Even with child care subsidies, low income families with two
small children will spend on average $2,030 a year on child
care annually.

$726
- 2,030
- 1,304

So now you’re $1,304 over budget, and you still don’t have
everything you need.

What do you leave out?

Toiletries, School Supplies, Shoes, Clothes, Holiday Gifts,
Education, Life Insurance, Furnishings, Recreation, Cleaning
Supplies, Entertainment, Birthday Gifts?

These are the decisions that people are forced to make every day
when they live in the state of poverty.

Visit http://www.povertyusa.org to learn more.

Source of Statistics:

Rent, utilities, transportation, food, health care: Consumer Expenditures Survey, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, February 2004; Child care: Expenditures on Children by Families, United States Department of Agriculture, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, April 2004 Poverty threshold: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey 2004 Annual Social and Economic Supplement

One might quibble on the example. Why would this person need a car? Can you imagine trying to find a job on the bus line in times like these? That would rule out most of the jobs for which you might qualify. Even so, the $4800 save would be more than eaten up by clothing, bus fare, school supplies, and household goods.
Two full time jobs at minimum wage amounts to a little over $22,000 a year. Do you know how difficult it is to find a minimum wage job with reliable full time hours and medical benefits? Medical benefits cost more than the hourly wage. The $18000 a year for two wage earners seems a pretty realistic figure for many unskilled workers. Yet I hear people complaining about multiple families living together: "How can they live like that?" with a tone of disdain. People do amazing things when they have no choice.

Update on Uzbekistan

The facts about Uzbekistan come clearer everyday. The "insurgents" were hardly innocent. But many bystanders and hostages were massacred along with the "insurgents".
'In the narrow lane, the machine guns clattered remorselessly for two hours'
The number of people murdered on "Bloody Friday" 13 May in the Uzbek town of Andizhan is at least 500, not 169 as the authorities now claim, an investigation by The Independent on Sunday can reveal. It is also highly probable that, separately in other towns at different times, at least a further 200 people were killed.


Red Cross Says It Received ‘Credible’ Reports of Desecration of Quran

ICRC says it received ‘credible’ reports: Desecration of Quran
WASHINGTON, May 20: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said that it had received ‘credible’ reports about US personnel at Guantanamo Bay disrespecting the Holy Quran, but the Pentagon moved quickly to correct the situation. Breaking their customary silence, ICRC officials in Washington said they had not only received ‘credible’ reports about the alleged desecration of the Holy Quran, but also had raised the issue “several times” with the Pentagon.


Spokesman Simon Schorno said the allegations were made by detainees to ICRC representatives who visited the detention facility throughout 2002 and 2003. But he also said the Red Cross heard no more allegations about mishandling of the Quran after the Pentagon issued a set of guidelines about how US personnel should handle the holy book.


State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters on Thursday that Pentagon issued the guidelines in January 2003. He said the US worked closely with the ICRC and acknowledged the group “had heard some concerns about the handling of Holy Quran, which it shared with the US”.


“The fact that the ICRC documented these allegations and formalized them, I think makes a difference,” Mr Schorno said. “We researched them and found they were credible allegations.”


Although Red Cross employees did not personally witness any mishandling of the Holy Quran, he said, they documented and corroborated enough reports from detainees to share them with Pentagon and Guantanamo officials in confidential reports. Mr Schorno said the Red Cross would not have raised the issue if it had been an isolated incident, but he would not offer specifics about the number of complaints.


US officials have often downplayed such complaints about Quran desecration because they came from detainees. New York-based rights group, Human Rights Watch, said that it also had received reports from Muslim detainees — at Guantanamo Bay, in Afghanistan and in Iraq — that US interrogators had repeatedly sought to offend their Islamic beliefs in order to humiliate them.


“Several detainees have alleged to Human Rights Watch and others that US interrogators disrespected the Quran,” said a statement issued by the group. US officials have acknowledged that investigations are ongoing into reports of religious intolerance — including desecration of the Quran — by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay.


“We do listen when people raise questions about the handling of the Quran, and we have made very clear what our policies are,” Mr Boucher said.

I've been silent on allegation of mistreatment of detainees when the only source of information has been detainees. However, the ICRC has an impecible reputation of statesmenship, only going public after numerous attempts to deal with the issue privately.
Now Bush's comments about the Newsweek article take on a whole new perspective. Certainly if Richard Boucher knew about the ICRC report, so did Bush. Yet he went on the offensive on Newsweek anyway. Certainly his agenda was not to see justice done, it was to weaken the free press in America.
The arrogance of this Administration is beyond anything I've ever seen. Truly they believe they can do anything they want and cover it with lies and for the most part, the American people will believe them. Well, the polls says less than half of Americans are not paying attention now and are inclined to give Doublethink Dubya the benefit of the doubt anymore. Time will tell if the rest of America will wake up from their snooze.

May 22, 2005

Bush's Indian gambit

The Australian: Bush's Indian gambit [May 21, 2005]
In a calculated State Department briefing in Washington on March 25 (now famous in New Delhi), the real US purpose was made explicit. The spokesman said that Bush and Rice earlier this year "developed the outline for a decisively broader strategic relationship" between the US and India. When Rice went to New Delhi she presented this outline to Singh, its purpose being "to help India become a major world power in the 21st century", the abiding dream of the Indian elite.


The spokesman continued: "We [the US] understand fully the implications, including military implications, of that statement."


It is rare in the past 100 years that a US president has sent a signal of this dimension. It means the US will help India realize the global aspiration that its size, geography and its post-1991 economic reform agenda has made into a national obsession.


Events are moving fast. The US is offering India a top-of-the-line version of the F-16, hi-tech defense and space co-operation in terms of satellites and launch vehicles, Patriot and Arrow missiles, and access to civilian nuclear technology. (India's aim is to generate 25 per cent to 30 per cent of its huge energy needs from nuclear.)


"The strategic dialogue will include global issues, the kinds of issues you would discuss with a world power," the State Department spokesman said. The US was prepared to "discuss even more fundamental issues of defense transformation with India, including transformative systems in areas such as command and control, early warning and missile defense."


After Rice's visit, US ambassador to India David Milford said the US and India "are poised for a partnership that will be crucial in shaping the international order in the 21st century".

I don't pretend to know much about the history of tension between the US and India other than they were dependent on Soviet weapons. But for once, I find myself applauding Bush. He's made one move in foreign policy I can support. Despite the denials pretended by India that they are not joining a "contain China group", their concern militarily in the long term lies to their north. China has been way too bellicose for me not to be concerned.

May 21, 2005

The Impending Economic Disaster

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: On the Deficit
On the eve of a titanic partisan clash in the Senate, eggheads of the left and right got together yesterday to warn both parties that they are ignoring the country's most pressing problem: that the United States is turning into Argentina.... Stuart Butler, head of domestic policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, and Isabel Sawhill, director of the left-leaning Brookings Institution's economic studies program, sat down with Comptroller General David M. Walker to bemoan what they jointly called the budget "nightmare."


There were no cameras, not a single microphone, and no evidence of a lawmaker or Bush administration official... they agreed that without some combination of big tax increases and major cuts in Medicare, Social Security and most other spending, the country will fall victim to the huge debt and soaring interest rates that collapsed Argentina's economy and caused riots in its streets a few years ago. "The only thing the United States is able to do a little after 2040 is pay interest on massive and growing federal debt," Walker said. "The model blows up in the mid-2040s. What does that mean? Argentina."


"All true," Sawhill, a budget official in the Clinton administration, concurred.


"To do nothing," Butler added, "would lead to deficits of the scale we've never seen in this country or any major in industrialized country. We've seen them in Argentina. That's a chilling thought, but it would mean that."

Has Bush started a debacle that threatens to unravel everything good about America? It would appear so. What started out as a strategy to "starve the beast" of the federal budget by running up huge deficits, has led to a politically untenable situation. Do the right thing, and commit political suicide. Bush is not about to do that. Nor is the majority of our elected leaders.
Why is that? How can they be so callous? Isn't their children's future also on the line? Maybe not. The extreme right has always been hoping to role back the FDR reforms: Social Security, and federal intervention in the economy through bank regulation, Supreme Court "Activism" and federal programs creating jobs. There are other more dubious examples of LBJ's legacy that are often inappropriately dumped in the FDR pile.
What we have happening before our eyes is a massive redistribution of wealth and political power. Over the past year, I've talked about this economic revolution under the rubric of Corporate Welfare here, here, here, here, and here.
The real intent is embedded in this quote from a Cato Institute publication "Class Struggle?":
A kernel of truth within the income mobility confusion is that good parenting matters to a child's lifetime success. Economics Nobel laureate James Heckman notes that "good families promote cognitive, social and behavioral skills," but "single parent families are known to produce impaired children who perform poorly in school, the workplace and society at large." Yes, there are many attentive parents with low incomes who spend hours reading to toddlers, and there are negligent parents with high incomes. But many dysfunctional families do have low incomes, and collecting more taxes from functional families in order to send more transfer payments to dysfunctional families can have perverse results. Mr. Heckman points out that "generous social welfare programs . . . discourage work and hence investment in workplace based skills. . . . Subsidizing work through the EITC . . . can reduce the incentives to acquire skills and so perpetuate poverty across generations."

What seems to make sense on it's face, carries with it ominous consequences for the majority of Americans. Basically, this philosophy was espoused in an article about banking reform, specifically advocating the deregulation of the banking industry that began under FDR. The ultimate goal of that move is to transfer the risk of the banking industry, currently bore by the banking industry under FDIC, to the depositor. Should banks collapse, depositors will lose their money. That means the average depositor, the middle class. In
Argentina, the middle class shrunk precipitously because jobs disappeared. Wages could not keep up with hyperinflation.
Although there was economic growth in Argentina in the 1990s, the increase in living standards for the masses of Argentines was very unequal. While a small fraction of Argentines may have been able to purchase the latest consumer goods, send their children to private schools, and occasionally take vacations abroad, the situation for most people in Argentina was far different. The official unemployment rate was over 10% throughout the 1990s. Official unemployment is now about 20% or more, and underemployment is 35%. In 1975, the poverty rate was about 10%--now the poverty level is around 40%.


The middle class has been affected by the privatization of state companies and the "austerity" plans that hit state workers particularly hard. In late February, the government announced it would not pay the full salaries of over 500,000 state workers. These workers have already had their pay and pensions cut under various economic "adjustments" ordered by the government. State workers had their wages cut 13% in July of last year. Retirees from state government have had their pensions cut by a similar amount. Now the government is saying it simply won't pay state workers at all. In addition, the Argentine government essentially stole $3.5 billion from state workers' pension funds to make a debt payment.


One principal of an elementary school said, "Being in education used to allow for middle-class living. But now I have teachers who have to sell their car to make it, and parents who take their kids out of school so they can work for the family's short-term survival."


The working class and poor have been hit even harder. Hunger has become widespread. Much of the "unrest" in December involved the looting of grocery stores by hungry people. People have been bartering clothes for food. Pacific News Service reports that "hundreds have resorted to selling their own hair to a wig store..." Independent plumbers and electricians haven't had a call in weeks because people don't have any money to pay for services or, due to the government's policies, are unable to withdraw enough money from bank accounts. It's estimated that workers at private companies have seen their wages decline by 20% since 1998. Average per capita income has fallen by about 14% during the recession.

[...]
The structure of Argentine business has changed dramatically over the last decade of "reform" and crisis. It is estimated that 38,000 medium-sized enterprises in Argentina operated by the petty bourgeoisie over the 1990s either went bankrupt or were saddled by crippling debt. Many more small businesses are now facing bankruptcy. In the early 1980s about a third of big enterprises were foreign-owned--in 2000, about two-thirds of big enterprises were foreign-owned.

The parallel between the US and Argentina is staggering.
One principle of political power is that people focused on survival rarely find the energy or relevance of voting, thus the concept of the politically disenfranchised. The larger the mass of unvoting Americans, the more power the rich have, the more like a plutocracy America becomes. Then the disenfranchised are left to take care of themselves in a process called "social Darwinism".
Back in the 1800's the rich had the upper hand and the religious people of America led the fight against social Darwinism as "evil". Social Darwinism was at the basis of Nazi philosophy and became an argument against welfare:
This idea eventually led to a variety of practices and beliefs, e.g., Nordic Racism, used by German anthropologists and later Nazi theoreticians. It also led to eugenics in which, it was believed, the unfit transmit their undesirable characteristics. A breeding program for human beings would see to it that the unfit did not transmit their undesirable characteristics.


Another application of a biological concept to human behavior was the notion that any attempt to provide welfare for the poor was a tragically misguided mistake. Feeding or housing the poor simply permitted them to survive and to transmit their unfitness to their children, who in turn would pass it on to their children. A spurious piece of sociology about two families known as the Jukes and the Kallikaks purported to trace a race of criminals and prostitutes to two persons in the Revolutionary War. This study was used for many years to demonstrate that "inferiority" was inherited.

In the 1800's, the Social Darwinists were condemned by Christian leaders as advocating survival of the fittest at the expense of the weak and disabled. Over one hundred years later, Christian Rightwing extremists bent on power and influence have perverted the Righteousness Of Divine Retribution as justification to abandoned the disabled to natural selection.
In the Dark Ages, disability was equated with being possess by the devil. Today, the disabled have been condemned for not having enough faith to be healed by God. Lack of faith has been equated with evil. And the disabled are abandoned to their fate. The conclusion the greedy draw has become the conclusion of those who dare call themselves "righteous".

May 20, 2005

Looming Trade War Between China and the US

Morgan Stanley - Steve Roach
The Chinese leadership is filled with indignation over Washington’s protectionist leanings. But it seems unwilling or unable to recognize the political aspect of this threat. Instead, senior Chinese officials are very focused on the macro origins of America’s external imbalances as being deeply rooted in an unprecedented shortfall of domestic US saving — a case that I have made repeatedly in my own presentations in Beijing and around the world over the past several years. What Beijing seems to be missing is that Washington politicians could care less about macro — they are focused are pinning the blame on someone else. Today, that someone else, unfortunately, is China.


What worries me most is that both nations — China and the US — are painting themselves into political corners from which there are no easy exits. Chinese officials speak repeatedly of the currency issue as a matter of “national sovereignty” — stressing that any external pressure to change will be counter-productive for a nation that places great emphasis on its newfound pride. At the same time, Washington seems increasingly convinced that the US body politic is finally prepared to say, “enough is enough” on the trade deficit. At the late March China Development forum, I warned Chinese officials that 2005 was shaping up to be the worst year for US-China trade relations in a decade (see “China’s Rebalancing Imperatives” published as Special Economic Study on 21 March). I was wrong. This year has turned out to be the worst outbreak of Washington-sponsored China-bashing on record. Political stalemates are resolved when one or both parties blink. China and the US are unflinching in their political resolve.

[...]
Recent actions in Washington offer little hope of compromise from the US side. At the same time, my conversations this week in Beijing left me increasingly concerned about China’s willingness to compromise. Don’t get me wrong — the air is buzzing with speculation of an imminent shift in RMB currency policy. But a new wrinkle has just entered the political equation — an escalation of efforts to contain an increasingly worrisome property bubble. Given its long-standing focus on stability, I get the strong sense that the Chinese leadership believes that there is a tradeoff between actions on the property and the currency fronts. Faced with worrisome downside risks to economic growth if it acts on both fronts, from Beijing’s perspective, it may boil down to a choice between these two options. Having played its hand on property, the odds of China moving on the currency may well have declined. And that could mean that the political quagmire with the US may only deepen, as a result.

A trade war with China could only mean increase inflation in the US as markets have to adjust to higher prices. I can't help but wonder if a trade war might heat up the competition over oil in the China Sea and elsewhere. If China's economy sees a precipitious decline, they may resort to distracting the populous from bad economic news at home by stoking the fires of nationalism. That nationalism seems already barely contained as witness by the suppression of protests against Japan required.

May 19, 2005

The Patriot Act Is Threatening Our Very Liberty

Now the FBI has taken to wasting it's time to spy on the opponents of the right-wing extremists. As Moyers says, Nixon has returned. It seems to me he's been reincarnated in Bush. I'm including the entire article from the Christian Science Monitor.
On the same day that the FBI warned a Congressional committee about the danger of "domestic terrorism," the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Wednesday accused the FBI of using terrorism as a pretext to spy on activists who "oppose the war in Iraq, the USA Patriot Act, and other government policies."

The BBC reports that senior officials from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms (ATF) and Explosives told a Senate panel Wednesday that they are "increasingly concerned" about "violent animal rights extremists and eco-terrorists." The law enforcement officials said they were particularly concerned about the activities of two groups: the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).

'Extremists have used arson, bombings, theft, animal releases, vandalism and office takeovers to achieve their goals,' said Mr. John Lewis, the FBI's counter-terrorism deputy assistant director. 'Investigating and preventing animal rights extremism and eco-terrorism is one of the FBI's highest domestic priorities,' he told the Senate committee on environment and public works.


But CNN reports that there was a fair amount of skepticism from some senators about the FBI and DEA's assessment of the threat level from these groups. Independent Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont noted that the number of people possibly threatened by any action of ALF or ELF numbered perhaps in the dozens, "but an incident at a chemical, nuclear or wastewater facility would threaten tens of thousands."

Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey wondered if the FBI was considering any one who protested government policy as a potential terrorist.

"The Department of Homeland Security spends over $40 billion a year to protect the home front," Sen. Frank Lautenberg said. After listing Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah, [Lautenberg] wanted to know who else the law enforcement agencies considered terrorists: "Right to Life? Sierra Club?" Lautenberg declared himself "a tree hugger."


Meanwhile, the ACLUissued a statement that said "the FBI and local police are engaging in intimidation based on political association and are improperly investigating law-abiding human rights and advocacy groups." The statement was based on information gathered from numerous Freedom of Information Act requests. The ACLU said it was filing a lawsuit in federal court to force the FBI to turn over "thousands of pages" of extra information that had been withheld.

"Since when did feeding the homeless become a terrorist activity?" asked ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson. "When the FBI and local law enforcement target groups like [Colorado-based] Food Not Bombs under the guise of fighting terrorism, many Americans who oppose government policies will be discouraged from speaking out and exercising their rights."


The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the ACLU documents show that "anti-terrorism agents who questioned antiwar protesters last summer in Denver were conducting 'pretext interviews' that did not lead to any information about criminal activity."

FBI officials and then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said at the time that the interviews were based on indications that radical protesters may be planning violent disruptions. Authorities said one specific threat involved plans to blow up a media van in Boston.

But the new memos provide no indication of specific threat information. Instead, one heavily censored memo from the FBI's Denver field office, dated Aug. 2, 2004, characterized the effort as "pretext interviews to gain general information concerning possible criminal activity at the upcoming political conventions and presidential election."


ACLU branches in several states also announced that they were taking legal action to investigate more about the FBI allegded spying on political activists.

The Boston Globe reported Wednesday that "The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts is seeking FBI files on behalf of four advocacy groups and 10 activists in the state, saying it believes they have been targets of surveillance because of their politics."

The ACLU, in Freedom of Information Act requests it plans to send out today, is requesting all records kept by the FBI and antiterrorism agencies on the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group in Cambridge; the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which has a state chapter in Boston; the International Action Committee Boston, an antiwar group, and the ACLU itself. The letter also seeks government files on 10 activists and political dissidents, including such liberal heavyweights as Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.


The Globe reports that an FBI spokesman said he had no comment on the situation in Massachusetts, but acknowledged that the FBI had conducted surveillance on some "Colorado-based activist groups, including Food Not Bombs, in response to a 'specific and credible threat' of violence at the Democratic National Convention last July."

The Associated Press reports, however, that the ACLU demanded that police in Denver "prove they are not using officers assigned to counterterrorism duties to spy on activists."

FBI documents obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act suggest Denver officers assigned to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force might have been gathering such information as recently as December, said Mark Silverstein, legal director for the Colorado ACLU.

That would violate an agreement the city made to settle an ACLU lawsuit over 'spy files' that police had gathered for decades on political activists. Police agreed not to gather such information unless there was legitimate suspicion of criminal activity.


The FBI has not allowed the activities of the two local police officers assigned to the counterterrorism task force to be "audited" as it is stipulated in the legal agreement. The Denver Post reports that Denver City Council President Elbra Wedgeworth, who helped draw up the agreement between the ACLU and the city, said "a lack of oversight of Denver's terrorism detectives 'is something I'm concerned about and looking into.' "

The Seattle Times reported in late April that the city of Portland, Oregon withdrew its police officers from the FBI's counterterrorism force in that city after the FBI "refused to raise [the Portland mayor's] security clearance, which he said was necessary for him to provide full oversight of city officers on the task force." Oregon has a law that says police officers cannot spy on anyone engaged in legitimate political activity.

Finally, Reuters reported on Tueday that the Senate panel which will review the USA Patriot Act ran into criticism almost immediately when it said it would conduct its review in secret. A spokseman for Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas said the mee
ting was in secret because it would discuss "actual intelligence operations."

But ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement: 'One reason that people across the political spectrum are concerned about the Patriot Act is that so much of it is shrouded in secrecy. Now, lawmakers are trying to keep legislation to reauthorize the Patriot Act secret as well.'

The Rape of the Rainforest... And the Man Behind It

Its hard to believe anyone would rape the earth like this man, or that a government would let him. But the world is driven by greed, and at this rate, it will die by greed. This is from The Agonist.
Mr d'Estaing
The Brazilian Amazon lost an area of 10,088 sq miles of rain forest in the 12-month period ending in August 2004 -- a rate of about six football fields every minute.(photo: The Independent)


The rape of the rainforest... and the man behind it
Michael McCarthy - Andrew Buncombe | May 20

The Independent - It is stark. It is scarcely believable. But the ruthless obliteration of the Amazon rainforest continues at a headlong rate new figures reveal - and today we reveal the man who more than any other represents the forces making it happen.

He is Blairo Maggi, the millionaire farmer and uncompromising politician presiding over the Brazilian boom in soya bean production. He is known in Brazil as O Rei da Soja - the King of Soy.

Brazilian environmentalists are calling him something else - the King of Deforestation. For the soya boom, feeding a seemingly insatiable world market for soya beans as cattle feed, is now the main driver of rainforest destruction.

The Lies That Led To War

Juan Cole has another hit in Salon. Reading about recent history of this President, it continues to shock me that the American voter can be so manipulated.
Salon.com News | The lies that led to war
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/19/lies/print.html

President Bush (left), on a New York visit, tells reporters in September 2002 that Saddam Hussein will probably not comply with U.S. demands to disarm. A government building in Baghdad (right) goes up in flames after a missile hit in March 2003.
Going to war is the most serious decision a president can make. It should never be approached in a cavalier fashion. American lives, the prestige and influence of the country, international relations, the health of its defenses, and the future of the next generation are at stake. Yet every single piece of evidence we now have confirms that George W. Bush, who was obsessed with unseating Saddam Hussein even before 9/11, recklessly used the opportunity presented by the terror attacks to march the country to war, fixing the intelligence to justify his decision, and lying to the American people about the reasons for the war. In other times, this might have been an impeachable offense.

[...]
Astonishingly, the Bush administration almost took the United States to war against Iraq in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. We know about this episode from the public account of Sir Christopher Meyer, then the U.K. ambassador in Washington. Meyer reported that in the two weeks after Sept. 11, the Bush national security team argued back and forth over whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan. It appears from his account that Bush was leaning toward the Iraq option.


Meyer spoke again about the matter to Vanity Fair for its May 2004 report, "The Path to War." Soon after Sept. 11, Meyer went to a dinner at the White House, "attended also by Colin Powell, [and] Condi Rice," where "Bush made clear that he was determined to topple Saddam. 'Rumors were already flying that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq,' Meyer remembers." When British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in Washington on Sept. 20, 2001, he was alarmed. If Blair had consulted MI6 about the relative merits of the Afghanistan and Iraq options, we can only imagine what well-informed British intelligence officers in Pakistan were cabling London about the dangers of leaving bin Laden and al-Qaida in place while plunging into a potential quagmire in Iraq. Fears that London was a major al-Qaida target would have underlined the risks to the United Kingdom of an "Iraq first" policy in Washington.


Meyer told Vanity Fair, "Blair came with a very strong message -- don't get distracted; the priorities were al-Qaida, Afghanistan, the Taliban." He must have been terrified that the Bush administration would abandon London to al-Qaida while pursuing the great white whale of Iraq. But he managed to help persuade Bush. Meyer reports, "Bush said, 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.'" Meyer also said, in spring 2004, that it was clear "that when we did come back to Iraq it wouldn't be to discuss smarter sanctions." In short, Meyer strongly implies that Blair persuaded Bush to make war on al-Qaida in Afghanistan first by promising him British support for a later Iraq campaign.


May 18, 2005

The Invasion of Iraq Accomplished What??


Registering New Influence, Iran Sends a Top Aide to Iraq - New York Times
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 17 - Wasting little time in registering its new influence in Iraq, Iran sent its foreign minister to Baghdad on Tuesday only 48 hours after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice became the first high-level visitor to hold talks with Iraq's new Shiite-majority government.


The arrival of the Iranian, Kamal Kharrazi, underscored changes in the political landscape that many Iraqis find dizzying: almost 25 years after Iraq and Iran started an eight-year war that left a million people dead, the government in Baghdad is now led by officials with close personal, religious and political ties to Iran's ruling Shiite ayatollahs.


Iraqi officials who greeted Mr. Kharrazi acknowledged that the timing of his arrival, so soon after Ms. Rice's 12-hour visit on Sunday, was not chance. "The political message of this visit is very important, notably in its timing," said Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari of Iraq, who at one point broke into fluent Persian, Iran's principal language, during a news conference with Mr. Kharrazi.

Remember how invading Iraqi would create an Arab ally in the Middle East? Remember who told Bush that? Chalabi, exposed as an Iranian spy is now leading the Baathist purge from government in Iraq, ensuring a thriving insurgency.
And now, Iraqi leadership is sending a message to the world, after the US leaves, Iran will always be there, as an ally and a friend. Iran now influences more oil, more Shiites, and more politics than ever before. All because the Neo-cons thought they knew something when they were being played by an Iranian spy. Don't people with national security responsibility get reprimanded, demoted or even fired for being cowed by a spy?

Public Broadcasting Under Attack

The Bush Administration is determined to silence independent media. The last source of news that the Administration and Corporate America has asserted control with intimidation is the Public Broadcasting Service. PBS was established by the The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. With that Act, Congress encouraged "expansion and development of public telecommunications" promoting "diversity of its programming depend[ing] on freedom, imagination, and initiative on both local and national levels" as "a source of alternative telecommunications services for all the citizens of the Nation" with "creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities".
The new Chair of Corporate Public Broadcasting, Tomlinson, not only pressured Bill Moyers to be "retired" from PBS, he's given $5 million to the Wall Street Journal for a weekly show on PBS. WSJ and its constituency is underserved? WSJ isn't an "alternative" source of news. He has brought the intimidation of the extremist right-wing to PBS.
Bill Moyers spoke about this challenge at the National Conference for Media Reform:
Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control, using the government to threaten and intimidate. I mean the people who are hollowing out middle-class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class in a war to make sure Ahmed Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq’s oil. I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into a slush fund and who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets. I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy.


That’s who I mean. And if that’s editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it’s OK to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence.


One reason I’m in hot water is because my colleagues and I at NOW didn’t play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism. Those rules divide the world into Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if, instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news.


Jonathan Mermin writes about this in a recent essay in World Policy Journal. (You’ll also want to read his book Debating War and Peace, Media Coverage of US Intervention in the Post Vietnam Era.)


Mermin quotes David Ignatius of the Washington Post on why the deep interests of the American public are so poorly served by Beltway journalism. The “rules of our game,” says Ignatius, “make it hard for us to tee up an issue … without a news peg.” He offers a case in point: the debacle of America’s occupation of Iraq. “If Senator so and so hasn’t criticized postwar planning for Iraq,” says Ignatius, “then it’s hard for a reporter to write a story about that.”


Mermin also quotes public television’s Jim Lehrer acknowledging that unless an official says something is so, it isn’t news. Why were journalists not discussing the occupation of Iraq? Because, says Lehrer, “the word occupation … was never mentioned in the run-up to the war.” Washington talked about the invasion as “a war of liberation, not a war of occupation, so as a consequence, “those of us in journalism never even looked at the issue of occupation.”


“In other words,” says Jonathan Mermin, “if the government isn’t talking about it, we don’t report it.” He concludes: “[Lehrer’s] somewhat jarring declaration, one of many recent admissions by journalists that their reporting failed to prepare the public for the calamitous occupation that has followed the ‘liberation’ of Iraq, reveals just how far the actual practice of American journalism has deviated from the First Amendment ideal of a press that is independent of the government.”


Take the example (also cited by Mermin) of Charles J. Hanley. Hanley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Associated Press, whose fall 2003 story on the torture of Iraqis in American prisons — before a U.S. Army report and photographs documenting the abuse surfaced — was ignored by major American newspapers. Hanley attributes this lack of interest to the fact that “it was not an officially sanctioned story that begins with a handout from an official source.”

[...]
I’ve always thought the American eagle needed a left wing and a right wing. The right wing would see to it that economic interests had their legitimate concerns addressed. The left wing would see to it that ordinary people were included in the bargain. Both would keep the great bird on course. But with two right wings or two left wings, it’s no longer an eagle and it’s going to crash.

[...]
And it reminds me that it’s not un-American to think that war — except in self-defense — is a failure of moral imagination, political nerve, and diplomacy. Come to think of it, standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.”