mtanga

Archive: POLITICS

>please note: some links may no longer be active.

Iran has already achieved that which it says it seeks: full mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium enrichment. Since this is the season for predicting in the Middle East, and given the paucity of hard facts or credible knowledge about the main players’ intentions, I expect the US and Israel to finally accept the reality that a military strike, no matter how punitive, would only temporarily set back Iran’s nuclear capability, because the technological knowledge is already in Iran’s hands and cannot be destroyed with bombs.

– Rami Khouri

The New Fisa Law

We have been covering the features of the new FISA act (here, here, here, and here), and I won't repeat that analysis here. I continue to think that the new procedures in Title I are far more worrisome than Title II, the immunity for telecom companies. But in this post I want to say a few words about the larger meaning of what has happened.

First, its worth watching to see if President Bush issues a signing statement to the legislation that reserves the right to disregard any provisions requiring accountability and reporting to Congress and the courts. He has done so before with other legislation, for example, regarding national security letters. If President Bush does issue such a signing statement, even after having repeatedly pressed for this bill, Democrats will look particularly foolish; for it is these provisions (and the FISA exclusivity provision) they have argued as the major reason why it is safe to vote for the bill. Of course, Bush will only be in office for about 200 more days, so he will have comparatively few opportunities to act on his threat to disregard the accountability and reporting provisions. The the real issue is whether the next Administration will continue to hold the same views as Bush/Cheney/Addington on Article II powers. If they do, even the FISA exclusivity provision won't mean much, because the next President will simply disregard it, much as Bush disregarded FISA's already existing exclusivity provision.

Second, the passage of this bill looks very much like a repeat of 2002, when the Democrats, eager not to be cast as weak on national security, caved on supporting an authorization for the war in Iraq, or 2006, when they caved on the Military Commissions Act. You might think that they had learned their lessons by now. When you give George Bush what he wants, people don't think you are strong on national security. They think you are weak because you are a pushover. If you can't stand up to a lame duck President with 30 percent approval ratings, who are you ever going to stand up to?

I note that one of the great architects of the give-Bush-whatever-he-wants-so-he-won't-call-us-weak strategy in 2002 was Tom Daschle, then the Democrats' leader in the Senate. As you may recall, Daschle's wisdom was rewarded by the loss of is own own Senate seat. These days, he is one of Barack Obama's closest advisors. Perhaps it is only a coincidence that Obama has taken the positions he has taken. Indeed, as the presumptive head of his party Obama effectively signaled by his support that the Democrats should not try to block this bill.

Third, you may still be wondering how George Bush triumphed, given that he has almost no credibility or clout remaining. My answer to this question is that quite apart from the natural cowardice of substantial segments of the Democratic party in the House and Senate, there is a far larger development going on. Let me say a few words about what that is.

Sandy Levinson and I have noted previously that we are in the midst of the creation of a National Surveillance State, which is the logical successor to the National Security State.

read the rest of Jack Balkin's excellent analysis

A Passing Conversation

It was soon after the Six-Day War. I was coming out of the main hall of the Knesset, after making a speech calling for the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state.

Another Knesset member came down the corridor - a nice person, a Labor Party man, a former bus driver. Uri, he said, catching me by the arm, what the hell are you doing? You could make a great career! You are saying many attractive things - against corruption, for the separation of religion and state, about social justice. You could have a great success at the next elections. But you are spoiling everything with your speeches about the Arabs. Why don't you stop this nonsense?

I told him that he was quite right, but I couldn't do it. I didn't see any point in being in the Knesset if I could not speak the truth as I saw it.
I was elected again to the next Knesset, but again as the head of a tiny faction, which was never going to grow into a strong parliamentary force. The man's prophesy came true.

In the course of the years I have often asked myself whether I was right then. Wouldn't it have been better to give up principles, even for a short time, and win political power, without which it was impossible to realize them?

I don't know if my choice was right. But I have never felt any remorse, because it was the right choice for me.

I remember this conversation when I hear about Barack Obama. He is facing the same dilemma.

There is, of course, one big difference. I was heading a very small faction in a very small country. He heads a huge party in a huge country. Nevertheless, the nature of the political dilemmas is the same in all countries, big or small.

read the rest of Uri Avnery's piece here

Dirty (Not So) Little Secret

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

"It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House," said one yesterday.

more from The Guardian (U.K.)

And They Wonder From Where The Terror Springs

Two weeks ago, I presented a young Palestinian, Mohammed Omer, with the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, in London. Awarded in memory of the great American war correspondent, the prize goes to journalists who expose establishment propaganda, or “official drivel”, as Martha called it.

Mohammed shares the prize of £5,000 with the fine war reporter Dahr Jamail. At 24, Mohammed is the youngest ever winner. His citation reads: “Every day, he reports from a war zone, where he is also a prisoner. His homeland, Gaza, is surrounded, starved, attacked, forgotten. He is a profoundly humane witness to one of the great injustices of our time. He is the voice of the voiceless.”
The eldest of eight children, Mohammed has seen most of his siblings killed or wounded or maimed. An Israeli bulldozer crushed his home while the family were inside, seriously injuring his mother. And yet, says a former Dutch ambassador, Jan Wijenberg, “he is a moderating voice, urging Palestinian youth not to court hatred but seek peace with Israel.”

Getting Mohammed to London to receive his prize was a major diplomatic operation. Israel has perfidious control over Gaza’s borders, and only with a Dutch embassy escort was he allowed out. Last Thursday, on his return journey, he was met at the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan by a Dutch official, who waited outside the Israeli building, unaware that Mohammed had been seized by Shin Bet, Israel’s infamous security organisation. Mohammed was told to turn off his cell phone and remove the battery. He asked if he could call his Dutch embassy escort and was told forcefully he could not. A man referred to as Avi stood over his luggage, picking through his documents. “Where’s the money?” he demanded. Mohammed produced some US dollars.

“Where’s the English pound you have?”

“I realised,” said Mohammed, “he was after the award stipend for the Martha Gellhorn Prize. I told him I didn’t have it with me. ‘You are lying’, he said. I was now surrounded by eight Shin Bet officers, all armed. The man called Avi ordered me to take off my clothes. I had already been through an x-ray machine. I stripped down to my underwear and was told to take off everything. When I refused, Avi put his hand on his gun. I began to cry: ‘Why are you treating me this way? I am human being’. He said, ‘This is nothing compared with what you will see now’. He took his gun out, pressing it to my head and with his full body weight pinning me on my side, he forcibly removed my underwear. He then made me do a concocted sort of dance. Another man, who was laughing, said, ‘Why are you bringing perfumes?’ I replied, ‘They are gifts for the people I love’. He said, ‘Oh, do you have love in your culture?’

“As they ridiculed me, they took delight most in mocking letters I had received from readers in England. I had now been without food and water and the toilet for twelve hours, and having been made to stand, my legs buckled. I vomited and passed out. All I remember is one of them gouging, scraping and clawing with his nails at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He scooped my head and dug his fingers in near the auditory nerves between my head and eardrum. The pain became sharper as he dug in two fingers at a time. Another man had his combat boot on my neck, pressing into the hard floor. I lay there for over an hour. The room became a menagerie of pain, sound and terror.”
An ambulance was called and told to take Mohammed to a hospital in Jericho, but only after he had signed a statement indemnifying the Israelis from his suffering in their custody. The Palestinian medic refused, courageously, and said he would contact the Dutch embassy escort. Alarmed, the Israelis let the ambulance go. He is now back in Gaza, under observation in hospital, suffering broken ribs, pains at the back of his head and difficulty with breathing. The Israeli line, as reported by Reuters, is familiar; it is that Mohammed was “suspected” of smuggling and “lost his balance” during a “fair” interrogation.

more from the outstanding (need I add?) independent journalist John Pilger at NewStatesman.com

Entering The Two Economy Society

Mike Whitney: Before John Kennedy took office, anyone making an income of over $200,000 was taxed at a rate of 93 per cent. Corporations also paid a much higher percentage of the total tax burden than they do today. The higher tax rates on the wealthy never hurt Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which was consistently over 4% during these years, and the middle class flourished in a way that was unprecedented in world history. Why don’t we return to the “redistributive” policies which worked so well in the past? Do you think “progressive taxation” is crucial for maintaining democracy and establishing greater equity among the people?

Michael Hudson: I think you’re framing the tax problem too narrowly. At issue is not simply the tax rate on the income that’s being taxed at present, mainly wages, followed by profits. Classical economists focused first and foremost on WHAT should be taxed. From the Physiocrats through Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill to socialists such as Ferdinand Lasalle and America’s Progressive Era reformers, they concluded that the main source of taxation should be unearned income, defined as land rent, monopoly rent, other forms of economic rent (income extracted without playing a necessary role in production) and capital gains on these rent-yielding assets, mainly land sites.

As matters stand today, you could raise the income tax to 100% and still not capture the actual cash-flow revenue of real estate, monopolies, and multinationals who use transfer pricing to manipulate their income and expense statements to show no reportable taxable income at all. So the first concern should be what kind of revenue to tax. Owning a real estate rental property is like owning an oil well in the days of the depletion allowance. In addition to charging off interest as a tax-deductible expense (rather than a financing choice), owners pretend that their buildings are depreciating, despite the fact that property prices have risen almost steadily.

So in most years no taxable income is reported at all. Real estate owners don’t even have to pay a tax on capital gains what Mill called the unearned increment if they plow back their sales proceeds into buying even more assets. And this is just what the great majority of wealth-holders do. They keep on trading and accumulating, tax-free. The situation is much the same with companies taken over by corporate raiders. Paying interest to junk bond holders absorbs what formerly were taxable earnings paid out as dividends. This is what really is crippling the U.S. tax system and de-industrializing the economy.

When Kennedy became president, one of the first things he did was to pass the Investment Tax Credit. This gave industrial companies a credit for making tangible capital investment. Real estate got in on the ride too, but the idea was to use the tax system as an incentive to spur investment and employment so as to keep industrializing America.

Fast forward to today. The tax system favors speculative gains and absentee ownership. Ironic as it may sound, really wealthy people prefer not to make any income at all. They prefer to focus on total returns, which they take in the form of capital gains. This is why hedge fund billionaires pay a much lower tax than their secretaries. Real estate is still our largest sector most of its market price consisting of the land’s site value rather than industry and other means of production. Given the existing loopholes, I would prefer not to tax corporate profits or even income at all, if the government could tax the free lunch of economic rent at its source. The discussion of WHAT to tax therefore should take precedence over how highly to tax the scant income that wealthy people are obliged to declare from the FIRE sector finance, insurance and real estate.

Perhaps the best way to frame the issue is to call this a re-industrialization discussion. Obviously, the more regressive the tax system is, the more poverty and inequality there will be. And as Aristotle said, democracy is the political stage immediately preceding oligarchy. That’s what the economy is now evolving into.

the full Michael Hudson interview can be read at Dissident Voice

Mr. Fish's Catch of the Day

From One Who Knows

U.S. leaders have assured the public that the extreme interrogation measures used on detainees have thwarted acts of terrorist and saved thousands of American lives. The trouble with such claims is that professionals who know something of interrogation or intelligence don’t believe them. This is not just because the old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work -- it doesn’t -- but also because they know that torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.

The administration’s claims of having “saved thousands of Americans” can be dismissed out of hand because credible evidence has never been offered -- not even an authoritative leak of any major terrorist operation interdicted based on information gathered from these interrogations in the past seven years. All the public gets is repeated references to Jose Padilla, the Lakawanna Six, the Liberty Seven and the Library Tower operation in Los Angeles. If those slapstick episodes are the true character of the threat, then maybe we’ll be okay after all.

When challenged on the lack of a game-changing example of a derailed operation, administration officials usually say that the need to protect sources and methods prevents revealing just how enhanced interrogation techniques have saved so many thousands of Americans. But it is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture has served some useful purpose.

Milt Bearden, a 30-year veteran in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, served as senior manager for clandestine operations. Read his full piece in The Washington Independent

Feingold Stands Tall – Again

Russ Feingold has consistently, throughout this dark political period in U.S. History, set himself apart from his mostly ineffectual Democratic colleagues. Here's yet another example, excerpted from his opening statement at the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on “Laptop Searches and Other Violations of Privacy Faced by Americans Returning from Overseas Travel”:

If you asked most Americans whether the government has the right to look through their luggage for contraband when they are returning from an overseas trip, they would tell you yes, the government has that right. But if you asked them whether the government has a right to open their laptops, read their documents and e-mails, look at their photographs, and examine the websites they have visited, all without any suspicion of wrongdoing, I think those same Americans would say that the government absolutely has no right to do that. And if you asked them whether that actually happens, they would say, ‘not in the United States of America.’

But it is happening. Over the last two years, reports have surfaced that customs agents have been asking U.S. citizens to turn over their cell phones or give them the passwords to their laptops. The travelers have been given a choice between complying with the request or being kept out of their own country. They have been forced to wait for hours while customs agents reviewed and sometimes copied the contents of the electronic devices. In some cases, the laptops or cell phones were confiscated, and returned weeks or even months later, with no explanation.

[snip]

DHS did provide written testimony. That testimony, which incidentally was submitted over 30 hours later than the committee’s rules require, provides little meaningful detail on the agency’s policies and raises more questions than it answers – questions that no one from DHS is here to address.

Needless to say, I’m extremely disappointed that DHS would not make a witness available to answer questions today. Once again, this administration has demonstrated its perverse belief that it is entitled to keep anything and everything secret from the public it serves and their elected representatives, while Americans are not allowed to keep any secrets from their government. That’s exactly backwards. In a country founded on principles of liberty and democracy, the personal information of law-abiding Americans is none of the government’s business, but the policies of the government are very much the business of Congress and the American people.

more from Gideon Levy in Haaretz

It may be said with rough accuracy that there are three stages in the life of a strong people. First, it is a small power, and fights small powers. Then it is a great power, and fights great powers. Then it is a great power, and fights small powers, but pretends that they are great powers, in order to rekindle the ashes of its ancient emotion and vanity. After that, the next step is to become a small power itself.

– G. K. Chesterton, Heretics (1906)

Hiding from the Red Cross

Washington - The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.

"We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who's since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility - Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan - were using sleep deprivation to "break" detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. "True, but officially it is not happening," she is quoted as having said.

A third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world.

more from the one reliable mainstream media source: McClatchy

Conservatism vErsus Authoritarianism

In Britain, the Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is attempting to enact legislation empowering the Government to detain terrorist suspects for 42 days without bothering to charge them with any crime (as a result of post-9/11 legislation, the British Government may do so now for 28 days). Much of the opposition to this expansion of the Government's detention power comes from the British Right, which sees it as an intolerable expansion of unchecked government power and a severe erosion of core Western liberties. Factions within the British Left are opposed to the legislation for the same reason.
The official position of the British Conservative Party is to oppose the legislation, and former Tory Prime Minister John Major -- who himself was the target of a 1991 bombing-assassination plot by the IRA -- wrote an Op-Ed in the Times Online emphatically opposing these increased detention powers and also opposing new DNA and other domestic surveillance programs. Headlined "42-day detention: the threat to our liberty -- The Government's plan is simply part of an assault on our ancient rights," the conservative former Prime Minister wrote:

[T]he case for war was embellished by linking the Iraqi regime to the 9/11 attacks on New York -- for which there is not one shred of evidence. As we moved towards war, that misinformation was compounded by the implication that Saddam's Iraq was a clear and present danger to the United Kingdom, which plainly it was not.
These actions damaged our reputation overseas. And, at home -- on the back of the threat of terror and two serious incidents in London -- they foreshadowed a political climate in which civil liberties are slowly being sacrificed.

We now know that, despite repeated denials, our Government was complicit in rendition, or -- to put it in plain terms -- the transfer of suspects out of civilised jurisdiction to a place where they could be held without charge for a lengthy period.

Although the intention was presumably to garner information, such action is hardly in the spirit of the nation that gave the world Magna Carta, or the Parliament that gave it habeas corpus.

I don't believe that sacrifice of due process can be justified. If we are seen to defend our own values in a manner that does violence to them, then we run the risk of losing those values. Even worse, if our own standards fall, it will serve to recruit terrorists more effectively than their own propaganda could ever hope to. . . .

The Government has introduced measures to protect against terrorism. These go beyond anything contemplated when Britain faced far more regular -- and no less violent -- assaults from the IRA. The justification of these has sometimes come close to scaremongering. . . .

The Government has been saying, in a catchy, misleading piece of spin: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." This is a demagogue's trick. We do have something to fear -- the total loss of privacy to an intrusive state with authoritarian tendencies. . .

So is a society in which the right to personal privacy is downgraded. These days a police superintendent can authorise bugging in public places. A chief constable can authorise bugging our homes or cars.

The Home Secretary can approve telephone tapping and the interception of our letters and e-mails. All of this is legal under an Act passed by the Labour Government. None of this requires -- as it should -- the sanction of a High Court Judge. . .

No one can rule out the possibility of another atrocity -- but a free and open society is worth a certain amount of risk. A siege society is alien to our core instincts and -- once in place - will be difficult to dismantle. It is a road down which we should not go.

That is an expression of conservatism true to its ostensible principles of individual liberty and limited government power. And, in England, principled conservatism on such issues is not unique to Major.

[snip]

This skepticism of Government power -- which lies not only at the heart of most key British reforms over the last 8 centuries but also at the heart of the American Founding -- is precisely what has been missing almost completely from the American Right, for which there is now no federal government power too great or too unlimited to embrace. The American right-wing faction which now dominates the Republican Party is defined largely by their insatiable lust for limitless government power in virtually every realm -- spying, detentions, interrogations, and war-making.

more from the invaluable Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com

Politicians are like bad horsemen who are so preoccupied with keeping in the saddle that they can’t bother about where they go.

– Joseph Schumpeter

Well, It Depends

When I studied public health in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I visited the old bus station and saw the separate doors with their "whites only" and "blacks only" notices written in large red letters. But very few things in life (except for fascism and cigarette smoking) can be viewed in terms of black and white.

My epidemiology teacher, David Kleinbaum, always told us that the answer to every question was "it depends." Should you care for the elderly and mentally ill in the community? Answer: "It depends" on the level of their functional ability.

Should we vaccinate against the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer? We could prevent around 63% of the cases in Israel by vaccination. Answer: "It depends" on the price. Currently three shots cost over $400, and I have opposed vaccinating in an internationally published article, in Vaccine . Obviously it drew flack from the vested interests of the pharmaceutical companies. The feminist lobby (probably paid for by the drug company) also attacked the "chauvinist decision makers" who are not willing to publicly fund the HPV vaccination. The truth is that $400 per person can be used to save ten times as many women (and children and men!) if invested elsewhere in the health system. When the price comes down to a reasonable (non mega-profit ) level, I will be the first to support the introduction of the vaccine. So I suggest the feminists turn their wrath on the drug companies.

Again one has to acknowledge that the pharmaceutical companies do spend vast amounts of money producing new drugs that are good for humanity (not too many new drugs were produced under Soviet rule) and should be able to cover their costs and make "reasonable" profits. Of course, in this era of transparency in decision making, no drug company reveals its real production and development costs for scrutiny.

So: Should one give statins? The answer is "it depends" on the person’s risk of having an Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) during the next 10 years. To go one step further: My field is health economics, which integrates epidemiology with economics and uses as its gold standard the cost per QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Year saved). So regarding statins the answer is now "it depends on the risk of an AMI and the cost of the drug (including side effects)."

more from health economist Gary Ginsburg at the South Jerusalem blog

More politics? click here!

•••

books