REDEYE 4/13/11

U.S. plans online fake opinion chats

GW, 3/25 — The U.S. military is developing software to manipulate social media sites secretly, using fake online personas (known as sock puppets) to influence net conversations and spread pro-U.S. propaganda.

Ntrepid, a newly formed corporation registered in Los Angeles, has been awarded a $2.76m contract with U.S. Central Command (Centcom), which oversees U.S. armed operations in the Middle East and central Asia, to develop an “online persona managements service” that will allow a single U.S. serviceman or woman to control 10 identities based all over the world.

The project has been likened to China’s attempts to control free speech on the internet. It might enable the U.S. military to create a false consensus, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother reports that do not correspond with its objectives….The languages to be used will include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.

Mexico fence serves only as killer

GW, 3/25 — …Border mayors came to the view that the fence was built…to provide middle America with an illusion. “This fence is a placebo. It gives somebody in mid-America a fluffy warm feeling. It really provides no real deterrent…They’re backing up vehicles and climbing over. It’s a very expensive joke.”….

But the fence has not been without impact…Some now cross deeper into the desert, and pay with their lives. They take to back trails….Their corpses are increasingly found…and the bodies are little more than skin on bone. Some immigrants, lost and knowing what awaits them, have hanged themselves from trees.

Last year, the bodies of more than 400…immigrants were found in the desert….Charley Bruce, former sheriff [said] the hypocrisy of his fellow Americans…vilify immigrants and then hire them to clean their houses, tend their gardens and build their swimming pools…

Boss loans make Afghans slaves

NYT, 3/16 — …The young man had twice escaped to join the Afghan Army, but when his father needed another loan from Mr. Bacha, the boss told him: “No. You must bring your son back here. Or else bring me the money you owe me and leave the house I have provided you.”

…Like tens of thousands of Afghans, the Muhammads are trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of poverty that keeps them indebted to their employers….They borrow from their employers, who generally pay them pennies an hour for their grueling labor — barely enough to survive and too little to pay off debts that only grow with each passing year….There is no escape for them or for their children, who are bound by their parents’ contracts….[They] are worn down, exhausted by 12-hour days that start before dawn….

The workers say the loans…are a blessing and curse, keeping them alive but eternally bound to the kilns and the difficult, low-paying jobs.

“We are slaves here because when you owe…money, then of course you’re a slave.”

Uprisings could spark world youth

NYT, 3/21 — About one-fourth of Egyptian workers under 25 are unemployed, a statistic that is often cited as a reason for the revolution there. The U.S….[has] an official unemployment rate of 21 percent for workers ages 16 to 24.

My generation was taught that all we needed to succeed was an education and hard work. Tell that to my friend from high school who studied Chinese and international relations at a top-tier college. He had the misfortune to graduate in the class of 2009….After more than a year he moved back in with his parents…The true unemployment rate for young graduates is most likely even higher….

Millions of young people…are…losing their faith in the future….All that matters is finding rent money….

As governments across the developed world balance their budgets…the young will bear the brunt of the pain: taxes on workers will be raised and spending on education will be cut....

Uprisings…are a warning for the developed world….Indeed, the “desperate generation” in Portugal got tens of thousands of people to participate in nationwide protests on March 12. How much longer until the rest of the rich world follows their lead?

No U.S.-U.N. move vs. oily Saudis

GW, 3/25 — Did you hear it? The clamour from western governments for democracy in Saudi Arabia? The howls of outrage from the White House…about this month’s shootings, suppression of protests and the arrival of Saudi troops in Bahrain? No? Nor did I.

Did we miss it, or do they believe that change is less necessary in Saudi Arabia than it is in Libya? If so, on what grounds?....

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister...recently promised to “cut off the fingers of those who try to interfere in our internal matters.” In other parts of the world this threat would have been figurative; he probably meant it. If mass protests have not yet happened in Saudi Arabia, it’s because the monarchy maintains a regime of terror, enforced with the help of torture, mutilation and execution….

Why? Future weapons sales doubtless play a role. But there’s an even stronger imperative. This month the French Bank Societe Generale warned that unrest in Saudi Arabia could push the price of oil to $200 a barrel…

As a result, political disruption there is threatening to…western governments….Few governments of nominal democracies are likely to survive the economic dislocation that a sustained price of $200 would deliver.

Oil dependency means dependency on Saudi Arabia. Dependency on Saudia Arabia means empowerment of its despotic monarchy.

At 93, militant calls to young

NYT, PARIS 3/10 — As a hero of the French Resistance, Stephane Hessel was in exile with Charles de Gaulle, in London, imprisoned in concentration camps, waterboarded in Nazi torture sessions and saved from hanging by swapping identities with an inmate who had died of typhus.

Now, at 93, he is the author of a best seller that has become a publishing phenomenon in France…It urges young people to revive the ideal of resistance to the Nazis by…resisting the “international dictatorship of the financial markets”….In particular Mr. Hessel protests France’s treatment of immigrants, the influence on the media by the rich, cuts to the social welfare system, French educational reforms and, most strongly, Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

“When something outrages you, as Nazism did me, that is when you become a militant, strong and engaged.”

Exec greed fed Japan nuke crisis

NYT, TOKYO 3/20 — New questions are arising about whether Tokyo Electric Power Company executives wasted precious time in the early hours of the nuclear crisis, either because of complacency or because they did not want to resort to emergency measures that could destroy the valuable plant….A former Tepco executive told the wall street journal on Saturday that the company had hesitated to ruin the plant with seawater.

Mexico priests rake in drug money

NYT, 3/7 PACHUCA, MEXICO — The large orange chapel here, with its towering cross, would be just another Roman Catholic Church if not for a bronze plaque announcing that it was “donated by Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano” — better known as “the executioner” commander of the ruthless crime syndicate called the Zetas….

The Roman Catholic Church in Mexico has been trying to confront its historic ties to drug traffickers. Long dependent on gifts, but often less than discriminating about where they come from, the church is grappling with its role as thousands die in turf wars among rich, and sometimes generous criminals.

But at the local level, the co-dependency of the church and the cartels often endures….Sociologists outlined a “religious economy” in which priests administered sacraments in exchange for exorbitant donations…Some priests say, “Hey, the guy who owns the factory, he’s a bastard, but we take his money, so why not take the drug money?”

Even if the money that built the church might have been earned through crime, even killing? “I’m not interested.”

….but darting eyes and quick answers revealed something different: fear. No one else interviewed outside the church was willing to provide a name….The Catholic Church, the government or the neighbourhood – were they took weak to stamp out the influence of the Zetas’ commander, even by just removing the plaque?

“Exactly,” [priest] Tellez said, smiling, seemingly glad someone else said it first. “Exactly.” 

 Haiti’s 1804 revolution lingers on

NYT, 3/16 — In Haiti….’cut off their head and burn down their houses,’ Dessalines told his troops, who went on to win a historic…victory over the French army in 1804. Two centuries later, the elite, some whom are descendants of the French colonists, still have a profound fear of the poverty-stricken general population. They understand fully that the triumph of the slaves never brought about the structural changes in Haitian society for which those early, bloody battles were fought. The ruling class still fears the overturning of the customary order. Revolution is a scary thing.

When the slaves gathered in 1791 to plot the end of French rule, there were about 500,000 of them on the island, and some 40,000 French colonists. Today there are…about nine million people living in unimaginable poverty, while a microscopic elite guards among themselves whatever wealth is to be had here.

U.S. system sinks into irrationality

NYT — …A rational political system would long since have created a 21^st-century version of the Works Porgress Administration — we’d be putting the unemployed to work doing what need to be done. In the political system we have, however,…”Job one is to stop wasteful Washington spending.”

Can’t use Marx; can’t make sense

NYT, 3/20 — Closing of the book of almost any book aspiring to analyze a social or political problem. Practically every exmple of that…no matter how shrewd or rich its survey of the question at hand, finished with…prescription that is utopian, banal, unhelpful or out of tune with the rest of the book. When it comes to social criticism, no one, it seems, has an exit strategy.

Consider a few cases of hard-headed criticism yielding suddenly to unwarranted optimism. Allan Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind” (1987), still influential,…features on its last page this though: “I still believe that universities, rightly understood, are where community and friendship can exist in our times…They have served us well.” Al Gore’s Bush-ea polemic “The Assault on Reason” (2007)…still ends with the former vice president declaring, “I feel more confident than ever before that democracy will prevail.”

If book don’t take refuge in unfounded hope, they may descend into banality. “Irrational Exuberance” (2000), by the Yale economist Robert Shiller, became deservedly famous for its uncommon prescience in warning about the financial bubble. But its takeaway advice, including nuggets like “Investors Should Diversify” and “Retirements Plans Should Be Put on a Sounder Footing” might have come from almost any financial magazine.

Even those social critics who acknowledge the difficulty of their solutions cannot help offering up the equally quixotic hope that people will somehow rise up spontaneously against the diagnosed ills….Mencken suggested that his pervasive attitude stemmed from the unrealistic hopes vested in democracy itself, which he said “came into the world as a cure-all and…remains primarily a cure-all to this day.”



RED EYE 3/30/11

U.S. uses ‘aid’ as imperialist tool

GW, 3/4 — If anyone is still suffering from the delusion that aid is all about charity, devoid of foreign policy interests, they should wake up now…Countries are frank about their mixed motives.

The largest recipients of U.S. aid, to take the world’s biggest donor, are not the poorest countries but those the U.S. sees as strategically important. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy remarked: “Aid is a method by which the United States maintains a position of influence and control around the world.”

Women big force in Egypt revolt

NYT, 3/6 — …Egypt’s popular revolution was the work of men and women.…At its height, roughly one quarter of the million protesters who poured into the square each day were women. Veiled and unveiled women shouted, fought and slept in the streets alongside men, upending traditional expectations of their behavior. 

The challenge now, activists here said, is to make sure that women maintain their involvement…. “Revolution is not about 18 days in Tahrir Square and then turning it into a carnival and loving the army….We have simply won the first phase.”Roughly 25 percent of Egyptian women work outside their homes….But…42 percent of women cannot read or write and almost no women are political leaders.

Europe uses dictators vs. migrants

NYT, 3/10 — The turmoil in Libya and elsewhere in the region has toppled or undermined North African dictators who negotiated a web of benefits from Europe, including aid and diplomatic standing, in return for stopping immigrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean. Without the assistance of those [dictators], many in Europe worry that they will face new waves of...immigration not only from the liberated areas in the north, but from much of sub-Saharan Africa as well.

The immigrants would arrive at a time when much of Europe — struggling with high unemployment and lethargic economies — is already awash with anti-immigrant sentiment…and many countries say that they are simply incapable of absorbing poor migrants.

“In Italy, there is really a panic,” said Anna Triandafyllidou, a migration expert with the Hellenic Foundation for European Policy. “Everything is up in the air, and no one knows what to do.”

Unable to build the kind of border fence that the United States has erected to keep Mexicans [out], countries like Spain and Italy have spent years forging close relationships with North African leaders, persuading them to prevent migrants from trying to sail the rough seas of the Mediterranean. In return, Morocco, Tunisia and particularly Libya sometimes used brutal tactics to keep immigrants from ever getting near European shores….Now….hundreds of young men…were eager to tell visitors their message: “We want work.”

Using crisis as anti-worker trap

NYT, 2/25 — …From Chile in the 1970s onward,…right-wing ideologues have exploited crises to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises, and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal…society.

Which brings us to Wisconsin 2011….The governor’s budget bill would deny collective-bargaining rights to public-sector workers….But his attack on unions has nothing to do with the budget. What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy. And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside.

For example, the bill includes language that would allow officials appointed by the governor to make sweeping cuts in health coverage for low-income families without having to go through the normal legislative process….”The department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids….This sounds…like a perfect set-up for cronyism and profiteering….Indeed, there are enough suspicious minds out there that Koch Industries, owned by the billionaire brothers who are playing such a large role in [governor] Walker’s anti-union push, felt compelled to issue a denial that it’s interested in purchasing any of those power plants. Are you reassured?....Union-busting and privatization remain [the] priorities.

Sounds like we need communism

NYT, 3/7 — Education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future will require ever higher levels of skill….

But what everyone knows is wrong….Computers, it turns out, can quickly analyze millions of documents, cheaply performing a task that used to require armies of lawyers and paralegals. In this case, then, technological progress is actually reducing the demand for highly educated workers.

And legal research isn’t an isolated example….High-wage occupations that grew rapidly in the 1990s have seen much slower growth recently….Conversely, jobs that can’t be carried out by following explicit rules — a category that includes many kinds of manual labor, from truck drivers to janitors — will tend to grow even in the face of technological progress.

Most of the manual labor still being done in our economy seems to be the kind that’s hard to automate…There aren’t many assembly-line jobs left to lose. Meanwhile, quite a lot of white-collar work currently carried out by well-educated, relatively well-paid workers may soon be computerized. It’s no longer true that having a college degree guarantees that you’ll get a good job, and it’s becoming less true with each passing decade.

So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn’t the answer — we’ll have to go about building that society directly….We need to guarantee the essentials…to every citizen.

Faith in capitalist future fading

GW, 3/4 — When it comes to class, Americans have long seen themselves as potentially rich…A Gallup poll in 2005 showed that while only 2% of Americans described themselves as “rich”, 31% thought it very likely or somewhat likely they would “ever be rich.”

But events are forcing a reappraisal of that self-image. Social mobility has stalled; wages have been stagnant for a generation. It is in this light that the growing resistance to events in Wisconsin must be understood….As the prospects of becoming rich diminishes, many are simply trying not to become poor….This tension brought thousands to the streets in all 50 states to support Wisconsin unions last weakened.

Polls suggest the public is siding with the unions….For if organised labour has fallen out of favor, the illusion that you can make It on your own is not far behind…Half the country thinks its best days are behind it.

 Banned film big hit in Mexico

GW, 3/11 — An attempt to ban a Mexican documentary about a young man wrongly convicted of murder twice has created a box-office hit. The film has proven popular with audiences. Then a judge ordered regulators to ban cinema screenings and interest in the movie soared. Released last month, Presumed Guilty was [promoted as an expose of the Kafkaesque world of Mexican justice that picks on poor people who can’t afford good lawyers, and almost always convicts them.

Afghan women get no U.S. help

GW, 3/11 — Although Afghan women’s rights were a prominent part of the rhetoric of [western] invasion, today the treatment of women under the Taliban is increasingly being dismissed as part of local culture…There is little appetite among U.S. politicians for protecting women in the region….The west will turn its eyes away from Afghanistan, even though “the insurgents still kill children, they still put poison in the food of schoolgirls, they throw acid in the face of schoolgirls, they burn schools. They still exist.”

….Gender studies…dispute claims that culture is to blame. “These people have been tossed to the wind and displaced, the old society has been eroded. Girls being given away to pay for opium debts, that’s hardly traditional. Now it is the people with the guns, the money and the drugs runners who have the power.”…

Few would argue that improvement have been made in women’s rights in the last decade.

He says U.S. needs a new motto!

United Features, 2/28 — Recent events in Washington and Wisconsin have me thinking that maybe we should just go ahead and change the national motto to something more truly reflective of today’s America. Forget…
In God we Trust”…Anyway, here’s my suggestion” “Money Talks.” Think about it.

Egypt’s nice army is big business

NYT, 3/6 — Few Americans worked more closely with Egypt’s military than Maj. Gen. Michael A. Collings….General Collings said the Americans were not able to track the for-profit arm of the Egyptian military _ a conglomerate that runs factories, farms and high-tech corporations…..Will a military so deeply invested in a system that conferred great economic and political power be willing o let go?

First hit private unions, then public

LAT, 2/26 — “The game goes like this,” as one pro-union political consultant I spoke with put it. “Destroy private-sector unions, reduce private-sector health and retirement benefits, then say “Hey, how come those public employees get such (relatively) good benefits? That’s not fair.” He scoffed at those now insisting that thy like private but only public unions: “Private-sector union are only ‘OK’ one they are completely emasculated.



RED EYE 3/16/11

Thousands protest Panama mining

GW, 2/25 — Demonstrations are spreading across Panama demanding an end to plans to reform mining laws in order to attract foreign investors. Thousands of indigenous people this month blocked the Pan-American highway at San Félix, 400km west of Panama City.

Some had walked for several days from villages in the indigenous Ngőbe-Buglé region, which has large copper reserves....

Opponents, a broad coalition of indigenous peoples, environmental organizations and trade unions...see it as a government plan to “flog our mineral riches to the multinationals”while jeopardizing the environment and the rights of indigenous peoples.

U.S. grabbed Haiti in 1915, still in

GW, 2/18 — In 1915, U.S. Marines invaded Haiti, occupying it until 1934. U.S. officials rewrote the constitution, and when the Haitian national assembly refused to ratify it, they dissolved the assembly. They held a referendum in which about 5% of the electorate voted and approved the new constitution, which conveniently allowed foreigners to own land. The situation today is remarkably similar  — everyone knows that Washington calls the shots.

Pills: a rising threat to U.S. troops

NYT, 2/13 — After a decade of treating thousands of wounded troops, the military’s medical system is awash in prescription drugs — and the results have sometimes been deadly.

By some estimates, well over 300,000 troops have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan with P.T.S.D., depression, traumatic brain injury, or some combination of those. The Pentagon has looked to pharmacology to treat those complex problems, following the lead of civilian medicine. As a result, psychiatric drugs have been used more widely across the military than in any previous war.

But those medications, along with narcotic painkillers, are being increasingly linked to a rising tide of other problems, among them drug dependency, suicide and fatal accidents — sometimes from the interactions of the drugs themselves.

Wallace Shawn saw the Red light

Harvard Magazine, March — During three years in the 1980s that included travel to Central America, [Actor-writer Wallace] Shawn came to espouse left-wing politics: specifically, an analysis of power, economics, and institutions....

“There was a point when I crossed over,...becoming less in the Arthur Schlesinger Jr. category and more in the Noam Chomsky category,” Shawn says. “It had to do with understanding that I and the people I knew were actually involved in the story. There are certain writers who specialize in saying, ‘Oh, my God, the terrible things they do to each other in South America! It’s absolutely shocking!’ At a certain point I was able to face the fact that — Wow, it was the U.S. Army who did that, and: a) it was my taxes that paid for them to do it; and b) they did it to preserve the status quo in which I am leading a very pleasant life. These things are happening every day because of me and my friends, and we’re not doing anything about it. You have murder and torture going on — so, what does that make us?

“I happen to believe that the American elite has been a marauding monstrosity on the world scene in my lifetime,” Shawn continues. It has been unimaginably brutal in trying to preserve the status quo and unimaginably greedy in trying to bring the world’s resources onto our continent....

Harvard’s role is mostly to service and to perpetuate and to create that elite.

20-yr. stalling as tribes sue Chevron

NYT, 2/15 — A judge in a tiny courtroom in the Ecuadorean Amazon ruled Monday that the oil giant Chevron was responsible for polluting remote tracts of the Ecuadorean jungle and ordered the company to pay more than $9 billion in damages, one of the largest environmental awards ever.

The decision by Judge Nicolás Zambrano in Lago Agrio, a town founded as an oil camp in the 1960s, immediately opened a contentious new stage of appeals in a legal battle that has dragged on in courts in Ecuador and the United States for 17 years, pitting forest tribes and villagers against one of the largest American corporations....

Both sides said they would appeal the ruling, setting the stage for months and potentially years more of legal wrangling.

Shout of “Get Out!” now “No Jobs!”

NYT, 2/14 — A month after Tunisians toppled their authoritarian president, sending shock waves across the Arab world, many are discovering that may have been the easy part....

A fragile caretaker government...faces a crush of immediate demands for jobs, economic improvement and security....

The same groups of young people who last month swarmed the streets shouting, “Get Out!” gathered Saturday evening with a new chant: “Unemployed!”

“The unemployed gained nothing from the revolution...We’re still waiting. We are waiting for work”....

The...unemployment rate is...as high as 30 percent in the impoverished and restive hinterland, where the upheaval began....

Last week the government called up military reservists to help maintain order.

Capitalism fails: need a new system

GW, 2/18 — What underpinned the great postwar boom was the industrialization of inventions. The goods that poured out of the west’s factories provided employment and rising wages for the mass of the U.S.’s and Europe’s citizens.

But the “low-hanging fruit” that delivered the benefits is disappearing...Productivity advances are not being made in new industries; they are being made by laying people off or moving production to low-cost countries. Nor is the internet a great job generator....

The technologies that created private-sector jobs in abundance are a shadow of what they were. This was disguised by the credit boom over the 30 years up to the financial crash in 2008, that created jobs in the service sectors....

If we want to step up the pace of invention, there has to be a huge shift in the way we think. For 30 years or more the consensus has been that governments fail, and only markets succeed. But reality is beginning to intrude. Even the British coalition government, wedded to the old-time religion, is finding that if it wants a growth strategy it has to...build institutions that innovate...Invention and innovation, we are discovering, are much too important to be left to the tender mercies of markets.

Big biz says, kill ALL regulations

Thom Hartman blog, 1/12 – Chairman... of the House Government Oversight Committee.... Issa asked for more than one hundred businesses to outline what federal regulations he should attempt to strike down with his new powers as Chairman....

The wish-list of deregulation includes: dismantling the EPA, repealing lead-paint restrictions, ending coal tar and hydraulic fracking regulations and ending required flammability tests for children’s mattresses.

Basically, free reign to pollute the environment, contaminate our drinking, poison our families with lead and mass produce fire traps for children, that’s what the business community wants Darrell Issa to let them get away with....

Get rid of all or most, was the overwhelming response – they’re “job-killing.” Anyone their side doesn’t like is “job-killing”....

Republicans are busy renaming House Committees – like removing the word “labor” from the Labor and Education Committee – and removing the words “civil rights” from the Civil Rights and Constitution Subcommittee.

I suggest they go ahead and rename Issa’s Government Oversight Committee too. Let’s just call it the “Unless You’re Big Business, You’re Screwed” Committee.

Market system = unneeded surgery

NYT, 2/19 – A clinical professor of surgery at the University of Southern California, said...”outrageous” numbers...of breast biopsies were done by surgery.

He said...unnecessary procedures were being performed by surgeons who did not want to lose biopsy fees by sending patients to a radiologist.

“I hate to even say that,” Dr. Silverstein said. “But I don’t know how else to explain these numbers.”....

Dr. Silverstein says that when he lectures and asks how many surgeons in the audience perform open biopsies, no hands go up. “Nobody will admit it,” he said.

Ask not profiteers to help!

Tribune Media, 2/11 – Obama sounded a strong patriotic note. Echoing John F. Kennedy, he asked business people to think of what they can do for their country. Alas, business owners tend to see their most patriotic duty as...first producing a healthy, sustainable income for their businesses.

Cease romanticizing Greece!

NYT, 2/20 – We like to think of Athens as a place where robed citizens wandered thoughtfully through the Parthenon and agora...Instead...it was filled with prostitutes, male and female, with small stalls for what Athenians called “middle-of-the-day marriages.”...There were two or three slaves for every adult, so leisured citizens, Socrates included, spent most of their time at the gym honing their bodies or in discussions.

Greed seems to beat persuasion

GW, 2/25 – One of the Conservative party’s most cherished shibboleths is that legislation and regulation are Bad, and that gentle persuasion is Good. The embodiment of that quaint belief is the Behavioural Insight Team, a seven-member group set up to influence policymakers and instill in them the belief that people’s habits can be improved without regulation. It has quickly become known as the nudge unit, and there is not a scintilla of evidence that it will work.

That is not our assertion; it is the admission to a House of Lords committee by Oliver Letwin, the awesomely brainy minister in charge of policy. He said there was no guarantee that the nudge unit will work, but that on the other hand it was low-cost (half a million quid) and “almost zero risk.”

A National Audit Office report last week was a little more forthcoming. It revealed that the nudge unit failed to convince a single [government] department to make use of its ideas.

America’s ‘promise’ being exposed

NYT, 2/22 – Senator Sanders is a Vermont independent...He asked his consituents to write to him about their experiences coping with the recession and its aftermath....

One of the things I noticed reading through the letters was the pervasive sense of loss, not just of employment, but of faith in the soundness and possibilities of America. For centuries, Americans have been nothing if not optimistic. But now there is a terrible sense that so much that was taken for granted during the past six or seven decades is being dismantled or destroyed....

The great promise of the United States, its primary offering to...the world, is at grave risk.

[no title]

NYT, 2/18 – The Egyptian military...also runs day care centers and beach resorts. Its divisions make television sets, jeeps, washing machines, wooden furniture and olive oil, as well as bottled water under a brand reportedly named after a general’s daughter, Safi.

From this vast web of businesses, the military pays no taxes, employs conscipted labor, buys public land on favorable terms and discloses nothing to...the public....

Now the military also runs the government....

“Protecting its businesses from scrutiny and accountability is a red line the military will draw...And that means there can be no meaningful civilian oversight.”



RED EYE 3/02/11

U.S. backs dictators — at least 36

NYT — A Washington-friendly dictator, propped up for decades by lavish American aid as he oversees a regime noted for brutality, corruption and stagnation, finally faces the wrath of his people….The embrace of dictators has been so frequent over the last half-century that it obviously results from hardheaded calculation….

Supporting Egypt’s military-led regime over four decades, first under Anwar el-Sadat and then Mr. Mubarak, offered strategic benefits to seven American presidents. They got a staunch ally against Soviet expansionism, a critical peace with Israel, a bulwark against Islamic radicalism, and a trade- and tourist-friendly Egypt…

History is rich with precedents. In 1959, there was Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, darling of American corporations and organized crime….In 1979, it was Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, abandoning the throne in the face of a revolt two years after President Jimmy Carter toasted his country as “an island of stability.”

In 1986, the turn came for Ferdinand Marcos, ousted by the Philippines’ People Power movement five years after Vice President George H. W. Bush told him at a luncheon: “We love your adherence to democratic principles and to the democratic process.”

The list could be extended. Since World War II, the White House, under the managements of both parties, has smiled on at least a couple of dozen despots. (“Friendly Dictators Trading Cards” marketed by a California publisher in the 1990s, featured “36 of America’s most embarrassing allies.”)

Youth sparked revolt, but it’s broader

GW, 2/6 — Most of the people in the Arab world are aged 25 or younger. They have known no other leaders than those dictators who grew older and richer as the young saw their opportunities — political and economic — dwindle. The Internet didn’t invent courage; activists in Egypt have exposed Mubarak’s police state of torture and jailings for years. And we’ve seen that even when the dictator shuts the Internet down protesters can still organize…Youth kickstarted the revolt, but they’ve been joined by old and young.

Dark side to Internet ‘freedom’

NYT, 2/6 — As Evgeny Morozov demonstrates in “The Net Delusion,” the Internet’s contradictions and confusions are just becoming visible through the fading mist of Internet euphoria. Morozov is interested in the Internet’s political ramifications. “What if the liberating potential of the Internet also contains the seeds of depoliticization and thus dedemocratization?”…Morozov convincingly argues that, in freedom’s name, the Internet more often than not constricts or even abolishes freedom.

The Iranian regime used the web to identify photographs of protesters; to find out their personal information and whereabouts...;To distribute propagandistic videos; and to text the population into counterrevolutionary paranoia….This sort of backlash of Internet “freedom” is routine. Polygamy may be illegal in Turkey, but that doesn’t stop Turkish villagers from using the Internet to find multiple wives. Mexican crime gangs use social networking sites to gather information about their victims. Russian neofascists employ the Internet to fix the positions of minorities in order to organize pogroms.…Don’t expect corporations like Google to liberate anyone anytime soon. Morozov urges the cyberutopians to open their eyes to the fact that the asocial pursuit of profit is what drives social media.

Job data: Reports block vital facts

NYT, 2/5 — You won’t hear policy makers acknowledging that the unemployment numbers would be much worse if not for the millions of people who have left the work force over the past few years. What happened to those folks? How are they and their families  faring?

The policy makers don’t tell us that most of the new jobs being created in such meager numbers are, in fact, poor ones, with lousy pay and few or no benefits. What we hear is…that businesses are sitting on mountains of cash. So all must be right with the world.

Jobs? Well, the less said the better.

What’s really happening, of course, is the same thing that’s been happening in this country for the longest time — the folks at the top are doing fabulously well and they are not interested in the least in spreading the wealth around…Both the Obama administration and the Republican Party are down on their knees slavishly kissing the rings of the financial and corporate kingpins.

Best investment: Buy politicians

MinutemanMedia.org, 12/21 — Perhaps Wall Street’s most profitable investment ever has been to pay off politicians. Candidate campaign treasuries swell with contributions from bankers….These doggie treats for the Watchdogs had paid a handsome return. No regulator moved to pull the plug on the subprime mortgage scam; no regulator is overseeing derivatives; and no regulator is yet putting the clamps on the latest life-insurance packaging scheme.

Nor, in this era of “anything goes,” when the public is clamoring for action, has President Barack Obama shown any fervor for such a course…In fact, all of Obama’s financial appointees have been good old boys. The “Change You Can Believe In” turned out to be mostly fairies and leprechauns.

Praise for new book on Marxism

GW, 2/11 — Eric Hobsbawm is often referred to as a “Marxist historian.”…But he is less often seen as a historian of Marxism…The publication of How To Change the World may help to set the record straight….Part One contains diverse studies of aspects of the thought of Marx and Engels….Part Two…comes close to providing an overview of the fortunes of Marxism in the…130 years since Marx’s death…[He does a] detailed justice to the history of major Marxist political movements….He commends the history of Marxism to our attention because “for the past 130 years it has been a major theme in the intellectual music of the modern world, and, through its capacity to mobilize social forces, a crucial, at some periods a decisive, presence in the history of the 20th century.”

But…since Marx’s death there have been regular announcements of the “crisis of capitalism”…Each time the patient has somehow recovered…Perhaps even Hobsbawm is not wholly immune to this fever when he speculates that the financial collapse of 2008 may signal the beginning of the end of capitalism as we have known it.

Budget-crisis laws tilt to rich

NYT, 1/22 — Public services are being dismantled throughout the U.S. in the name of austerity — school systems, libraries…transportation services, and so on. Any talk of raising taxes on the rich is verboten. Shared sacrifice? Not if you’re wealthy.

Egypt: old gang OK with U.S.

NYT, 2/8 — The United States…in Egypt…is relying on the existing government to make changes that it has steadfastly resisted for years, and even now does not seem impatient to carry out….The result has been to feed a perception, on the streets of Cairo and elsewhere, that the United States…is…leaving hopes of…change in large part in the hands of Egyptian officials — starting with Mr. Suleiman — who have every reason to slow the process.

Egypt key: army’s lower ranks

NYT, 2/6 — Whoever becomes the new president after elections in September, American officials say that the rich and secretive Egyptian military holds the key to the governing of Egypt, the country’s future and by extension to the stability of the Arab world.

American officials are unsure about the thinking of the midlevel military leadership, which is considered sympathetic to the protesters, and whether it could split with the generals tied to Mr. Mubarak. “Behind the scenes, the military is making possible the various forms of assault on the protesters,” an expert said on the Egyptian military said. “It’s trying to secure a transition for itself. There’s lots of evidence that the military is complicit, but for the most part Egyptians don’t even want to admit that to themselves.” Over all, the army rank-and-file has shown sympathy with the protesters and the leadership has been either unwilling or unable to order its troops to fire on the demonstrators. The military would make a cold-blooded decision about Mr. Mubarak. “They are a rational, calculating institution. The moment they see it is not in their interest to retain him, they will usher him out.”

Census: New Orleans devasted

NYT, 2/11 — The scale of the long-term devastation inflicted on New Orleans inflicted on New Orleans has been revealed by the 2010 U.S. Census, which found that the city’s population has collapsed by almost a third…since hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. The number of African Americans in the city has also fallen, to 60% from 67%.



RED EYE 2/16/11

Microcredit: no miracle cure

NYT, 1/6 — Microcredit is losing its halo in many developing countries. Microcredit was once extolled by world leaders like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair as a powerful tool that could help eliminate poverty, through loans as small as $50 to cowherds, basket weavers and other poor people for starting or expanding businesses. But now microloans have prompted political hostility in Bangladesh, India, Nicaragua and other developing countries.

In December, the prime minister of Bangladesh…turned her back on them. She said microlenders were “sucking blood from the poor in the name of poverty alleviation.”….In Nicaragua, Pakistan and Bolivia, activists and politicians have urged borrowers not to repay their loans.

The hostility toward microfinance is a sharp reversal….Most borrowers do not appear to be climbing out of poverty, and a sizable minority is getting trapped in a spiral of debt….Some lenders have minted profits that might make Wall Street bankers envious.

Palestinian leaders seek sellout

GW, 1/28 — The 1,600 or so documents in the Palestine papers were obtained by al-Jazeera and shared in advance of publication with the Guardian...The overwhelming impression that emerges from the confidential records of a decade of Middle East peace talks is of the weakness and desperation of Palestinian leaders, the unyielding... of Israeli negotiators and the often contemptuous attitude towards the Palestinian side shown by U.S. politicians and officials....

During 2009-10, Palestinian negotiators are shown adopting an increasingly injured and despairing tone with U.S. officials.

In an emotional outburst to Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy...the senior Palestinian negotiator...complained that the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership wasn’t even being offered “a fig leaf....”

The scale of concessions offered by...Palestinian Authority negotiations — far beyond what the majority of Palestinians would be likely to accept — was insufficient for Israeli leaders....PLO leaders accepted Israel’s demand to define itself as an explicitly Jewish state, in sharp contrast to their public position.

School cheats on class-size law.

NYT, 1/18 — At North Miami Beach Senior High School, Naomi Baptiste expected to be greeted by her teacher when she walked into her precalculus class.

“All there were were computers in the class,” said Naomi, who walked into a room of confused students...

Naomi is one of over 7,000 students in Miami-Dade.... virtual classrooms, called e-learning labs... put in place last August as a result of Florida’s Class Size Reduction Amendment.... The amendment limits the number of students allowed inside classrooms, but not in virtual labs.

School administrators said that they had to find a way to meet class-size limits....The virtual labs were necessary because “there’s no way to beat the class-size mandate without it.”...

“The way our state is dealing with class size is nearly criminal,” said...an English teacher...in Miami.

Israeli democracy on a witch-hunt

GW, 1/14 — The funding of Israeli human and civil rights groups is to be investigated amid claims they are acting against the country’s interests, members of the Israeli parliament decided last week — a move described by opponents as “McCarthyite.”...

The supporters of the bill claimed the groups’ work was “delegitimizing” Israel and was funded by anti-Israel international bodies....Rights organizations... claimed the bill was part of a larger campaign to intimidate groups and individuals who speak out against the actions of the Israeli state.

The real Obama is bosses’ man

NYT, 1/24 — Meet the new buzzword, same as the old buzzword. In advance of the State of the Union, President Obama has telegraphed his main theme: competitiveness....But let’s not kid ourselves: talking about “competitiveness” as a goal is fundamentally misleading....It could lead to policies based on the false idea that what’s good for corporations is good for America.

Consider....employment is way down, but profits are hitting new records. Who, exactly, considers this economic success?....The ideology that brought the economic disaster in 2008 is back on top — and seems likely to stay there until it brings disaster again.

Farm labor wins long fight, but...

NYT, 1/19 — IMMOKALEE, Fla. - After fighting for more than a decade for better wages, a group of Florida farmworkers has hashed out the final piece of an extraordinary agreement with local growers and several big-name buyers, including fast-food giants McDonald’s and Burger King, that will pay the pickers roughly a penny more for every pound of fruit they harvest.

Farm laborers are among the lowest-paid workers in the United States, and the agreement could add thousands of dollars to their income....Still, some in the industry worry, the unusual agreement could be undermined if enough buyers turn to competitors in California and Mexico willing to sell tomatoes at a cheaper price.

World’s #1 democracy kills dissent

NYT, 1/23 - Activists like Mr. Jethwa - making pointed inquiries at the dangerous intersection of high-stakes business and power politics in India - have paid a heavy price. Perhaps a dozen have been killed...and countless others have been beaten or harassed...

India may be the world’s largest democracy, but...citizens are treated like subjects. Officials who are meant to serve them often act more like feudal lords than representatives of the people...

Mr. Jethwa was a longtime activist...His objective was to stop illegal quarries...This mining has had serious consequences....for water used for drinking and farming.

In February 2008, Mr. Jethwa was attacked by a gang of men on motorbikes...His father begged them to stop....”But he used to say: ‘Forget that you have three sons and say you have two sons. Let me do my work.’”....On July 20, late at night, he was gunned down.

The police...made no effort to investigate....”The message that has gone out is that if you resort to your right to information to try to harass a political person, even after your murder, that man will go scot-free....

“You cannot fix the system. Everybody is getting money. If I give my life, what is the point?”

Big O speech dodges all specifics

NYT, 1/26 - Mr. Obama offered a rosy economic vision. The president who once emphasized the problems he inherited from his predecessor was instead looking forward and making the case that the nation had at long last emerged from economic crisis.

“Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back,” Mr. Obama said. “Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.”

The speech was a light on new policy proposals...to bring the unemployment rate below 9 percent...He called for legislation to address illegal immigration but provided no details...He talked only generally about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan....Government itself, he said, needs to be updated...”We can’t win the future with a government of the past,” he said.

Junta thrives vs. Burma rebel saint

New Yorker, 1/24 - Aung San Suu Kyi...became annoyed when I asked her about...the failure of the N.L.D. party to galvanize the young. “I think the party is stronger now than it has been in a long time,” she insisted....

Even so, two decades after her return from Oxford to lead the opposition, the country shows few signs of progress. The military dictatorship is entrenched, and pro-democracy forces have been weakened. Some of the monks who led the Saffron Revolution remain in Myanmar’s prisons, and the regime has taken over many of the monasteries, carefully vetting all applicants for their political loyalties....

Aung San Suu Kyi’s critics fear that she and the rest of the N.L.D.’s Old Guard remain wedded to traditional forms of protest - hunger strikes, demonstrations, election boycotts, calls for more sanctions - that are ineffective in a world where China is happy to do business with countries that manifest little or no concern for human rights...”I wouldn’t say the regime is afraid of her.” They would be scared of “any movement that would consolidate a grassroots following...But the N.L.D. is not that anymore.”

Big-biz media won’t cover the war

Thom Hartman Blog, 12/20 - A new study by the Pew Research Center may explain why outrage isn’t growing around the country over the unpopular war in Afghanistan. Simply - the media isn’t talking about it....The war costs taxpayers more than $160 billion a year - but it’s not even talked about in the public sphere - even in terms of deficit reduction - which has been a hot-button topic all year....Corporations who own our news media...won’t cover it.

Sounds like we need “CHALLENGE”

Thom Hartman Blog, 12/27 - “The Nation” magazine uncovered at least 75 corporate lobbyists or PR officials that now appear on television political talk shows with no disclosure of what business interests they actually work for. Their job? To do the bidding of their corporate overlords under the guise of “expert political commentary.”....We need to create new media outlets that aren’t beholden to corporate interests.

Capitalists win after Socialist vote

GW, 1/28 - For my money the greatest European socialist of them all was Bruno Kreisky, born 100 years ago.

Kreisky led his country for 13 years, from 1970-83, winning a clear majority for the Socialist party of Austria a remarkable three times. During his time in office as the first popularly elected “red” chancellor, he transformed Austria into one of the most egalitarian societies on earth. Kreisky promoted working-class education, extended public ownership and expanded the welfare state...”Hundreds of thousands unemployed matter more than a few billion schillings of debt.”

Kreisky’s career shows us what can be achieved if the main party of the left elects a leader who is committed, sincere and refuses to apologize for his or her socialist beliefs....

But for the past 20 years, the main parties of the European left have gone in another direction. They have elected leaders...who have tamely accepted the international rule of money power...The forces of capital have managed to destroy many of the economic and social advances made in the postwar era, and those advances which still remain are threatened by the new round of cutbacks.

Obama isn’t even hiding retreat

NYT, 1/22 - SCHENECTADY, N.Y. - President Obama, sending another strong signal that he intends to make the White House more business-friendly, named a high-profile corporate executive on Friday as his chief economic adviser, continuing his efforts to...reclaim the political center.

Tunis flare-up needs a red focus

NYT, 1/19 - It is Friday, Jan. 14, in downtown Tunis. In the streets, we shout “No!”- a million tongues together against the dictatorial, 23-year-long government of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Tear gas, bullets and death fly above us.

...On Monday we are told that a new “unity” government has formed. When Tunisians see that some members of the old regime have been named to cabinet posts, there is a new wave of disturbances, and people start saying that the revolution has been stolen from them.

On Tuesday, young people again take to the streets, demanding the dissolution of Mr. Ben Ali’s party, the Democratic Constitutional Rally Party, which has ruled Tunisia since independence in 1956... While I agree that it may be impossible to dissolve the party without sending the country into chaos, I think we have no choice but to try...

As for myself, I feel an overwhelming happiness that I will be able to write freely...

I support the revolution and, like so many of the young people, worry that it will be stolen from us by the traitors, thieves and killers who have ruled us for far too long.