August 30, 2009
The Responsibility to Protect, the International Criminal Court, and Foreign Policy In Focus: Subverting the UN Charter in the Name of Human Rights
By Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
It was just a matter of time before members of the collapsing left enlisted in the imperial attack on the most fundamental principles of the UN Charter and added their voices to the growing chorus of support for Western power-projection under the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). But this has now been done in Foreign Policy in Focus by John Feffer, Ian Williams, and David Greenberg. [1] That such a rightward turn could find a home at the Institute for Policy Studies, whose biweekly bulletins still arrive under the heading "Unconventional Wisdom," and which connects the "research and action of more than 600 scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the United States a more responsible global partner," we find deeply troubling.
August 29, 2009
Further Thoughts on Article V
Article V of the Constitution of the United States provides a mechanism for adding amendments. Actually, one relatively straightforward mechanism and another relatively undefined, bifurcated mechanism. The first path is for both the House and the Senate, each by a two thirds vote, to propose an amendment and then for three quarters of the legislatures of the states to ratify it, at which point it becomes part of the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. We've now added twenty seven amendments, the first ten in a batch — the Bill of Rights — and the following seventeen individually. Each and every one was added by following the above procedure. Why, one wonders, might that be so, considering the other available mechanism?
“The Democracy Amendment”
“The Senate of the United States shall be permanently dissolved. All functions of the Senate shall be absorbed by the House of Representatives, except that the Vice President of the United States shall have no position in the House.
The President of the United States of America and the Vice President shall be elected by a majority vote from citizens in the country as a whole. The House of Representatives may determine the time of voting for the President and Vice President and direct national voting standards for their election, and for election to the House, to be supervised by Officers of the United States as provided for by Law.”
August 26, 2009
Talk To The Hand
"He is a fighter who cares passionately about the causes he believes in," said Senator Kennedy when endorsing the candidacy of Barack Obama, "without demonizing those who hold a different view." No doubt, Senator Kennedy dearly loved bipartisanship — you can't turn on the television now without hearing about it. And on Senator Kennedy's signature issue, health care, he had been seeking bipartisanship since the early 1970s when he tried to cut a deal with Richard Nixon.
August 23, 2009
Armed, Angry Lunatics
Let's do a thought experiment. We go back in time to when W. was dictator. He's had a change of heart and decides to allow federal funds for stem cell research. Never mind why. So to shore up his base he goes to a rally in Scottsdale, AZ — the White House staff figures that more liberal conservatives like to party there. But when W. arrives at his rally he's greeted by several dozen fanatical "pro-life" advocates, brandishing an assortment of assault rifles and high powered semi-automatic pistols. What would have happened to the demonstrators? They would have been tossed in jail, that's what, and some kind of Patriot Act justification would have been figured out later. Much, much later some might have been released but it's a good bet that at least a few would have been kept in jail indefinitely, pour encourager les autres.
Start Over
Amazon occasionally offers these ridiculously cheap magazine subscriptions, a couple bucks a year, so I happen to get Rolling Stone. And in the current issue Matt Taibbi has an essay on the health care reform process. I read it this afternoon, sitting on the porch — a beautiful afternoon here in Washington — but when I went to find the essay online discovered that Rolling Stone has only made available some related Taibbi videos. Oh well... Now, Taibbi often gets things wrong and he tends too much towards hysteria for my tastes, but on health care he makes a lot of terrific, valid points. Most importantly, that the political process is broken.
August 22, 2009
A Tale of Two Economies
Back in April I speculated that the economy might be turning around. When I wrote I was thinking in terms of the traditional metric, GDP, and so far as that goes it's starting to look as though I might have been right. But a smarter way to think about it would be in terms of two economies. One where there's more productivity, more profits, and the rich and the very rich get richer and start to spend money again. The other with everybody else, who aren't doing so good. See Simon Johnson's recent blog post for a very sensible take on this from an establishment economist who manages quite often to understand the news.
Artificial Life
Artificial Life sounds like a fine thing, except that it may come complete with its own existential angst, in which case I'm not sure we'd know how to propitiate a possibly irascible artificial Deity. How efficacious would it be to build a monumental pyre of stock options from firms that own the patents on artificial lifeforms? Or if we're phenomenally lucky perhaps a simple electronic prayer on the intertubes would suffice... In any case, it seems unwise, considering, to venture into the creation of artificial life on a purely commercial basis, as we are doing — I would feel much more comfortable having a government scientific agency involved that's capable of assessing the risks. This is the edge of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend
August 20, 2009
Three Card Monte, Washington Style
In our nation's capital, when all else fails, politicians become passive aggressive. "If in doubt, toothlessly gum smack [policy X] into pablum." The White House wants to kill the public option, but not in public, not now that progressives have started to fight back. The solution: legislative legerdemain. Cut reform into parts, pass the subsidies to corporations, lose the public option "by accident." Blame dozens of factors. Rely upon media propaganda to anesthetize everyone. Move on. And two related links. The Onion explains health care politics. John Pilger speaks (most highly recommended).
August 19, 2009
Reportorial Malpractice
The Washington Post seems determined to set new lows with its imbecilic political reporting. Here's the opening paragraph of today's front page story on health care:
“President Obama's advisers acknowledged Tuesday that they were unprepared for the intraparty rift that occurred over the fate of a proposed public health insurance program, a firestorm that has left the White House searching for a way to reclaim the initiative on the president's top legislative priority.”
It's breathtaking prose, worthy of a golden stenographer's award. But seriously, had nobody at the Post previously thought to ask any administration officials what they might do if the majority of the Democratic Party objected to the administration's abandoning a public option? (Note that according to a recent poll from Indiana University the most preferred option among Democrats — with 69% approval — is the far more radical proposal of single payer.) Had nobody at the Post thought to ask for a reaction from an administration official to Howard Dean's repeated, very widely disseminated affirmation that health reform without a public option is not "reform"? ...Keeping in mind that Dean is a former Chairman of the Party? Which raises a question: what's the real story? Well, here's my guess.
August 18, 2009
Metrication
There's the metric system. Then there's that other system, the one that doesn't seem to have a name, that we use here in the U.S. I think of this in the context of the health care debate, as so many American fools — way too many — labor under the delusion that everything is the best here in the good old U. S. of A. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. But to take just one counter-example, a particularly telling one, only three countries in the world do not use the metric system: the U.S., Myanmar (Burma), and Liberia. What a weird grouping. And what a charmingly quaint, hidebound country we have!
August 16, 2009
The Bullshit Artist in Chief
One of the things I haven't seen discussed — I'm sure it must have been but it's probably fair to say not widely — is to what extent a public plan might be vulnerable to cherry-picking behavior by the insurance companies. If many/most healthy young people get recruited into cheap private plans then it's not entirely clear that a public plan could be inexpensive or even effective. And probably that's why no other country on earth has a public plan option as envisioned in our current debates; where public and private plans do coexist the latter are extremely regulated, something that, along with single-payer, also isn't on the table here. Therefore the idea, as near as I can tell, is not that a public plan per se would work, but that it becomes an intermediate step towards a single-payer system, a step that presupposes further effort to shepherd a majority of the public into an expanded version of Medicare. That's a politically pragmatic approach I can support, and I suspect it's also what most advocates of a public plan have in mind.
August 15, 2009
Why We Fight?
How apt that Mr. Holbrooke, in a recent Washington conclave, would compare the conditions for a U.S. exit from Afghanistan to pornography: "We'll know it when we see it." That knowing, presumably, includes approval of the latest Afghan medieval law-making which turns women into chattel. Among its many retrograde provisions the law permits a husband to withhold food from his wife if she refuses his sexual demands. So, again, why exactly are we fighting in Afghanistan?!
August 14, 2009
In Praise of Lewis Orchards
It's about an hour outside DC, in Maryland, over to Sugarloaf Mountain. Lewis Orchards. Take back roads via River Road, it's a nice drive in the country. I've been out twice the past week, and will probably go again very soon. Peaches are outstanding, melons are excellent, tomatoes outstanding (many are huge in diameter and a couple slices make a rocking bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich — on white toast with some mayo), corn excellent, various small vegetables outstanding. None organic, unfortunately. Very reasonably priced. A large operation, lots of turnover, produce extremely fresh. Highly recommended.
August 13, 2009
Of Businesses and Boycotts
Today at 4:00 p.m. Howard Dean will be giving a book talk on health care reform at a local bookstore, Politics and Prose. I've recorded two book talks there previously, for the purpose of public service podcasts, but when I called this morning to ask permission, the answer was "no." They now sell their own recordings of their book talks. OK. I didn't argue with them at all — there's no point, it's their place and they can do what they want. But I won't buy books there anymore and I've taken down the free advertising I'd given them for years in the left column of this website.
August 10, 2009
Late August EP Podcast Schedule
Here's a heads-up for the rest of August. On Friday, August 14th, my guest will be Tom Lasseter, McClatchy's Bureau Chief in Moscow. It's Tom's fourth appearance on EP, and it's always a great pleasure talking with him. Friday, August 21st, my guest will be NPR contributor Stacy Horn, talking about her new book Unbelievable
August 9, 2009
Authoritarian Culture
The common predicate of American politics assumes rational interactions towards a greater good. In practice, in critical ways, as a chronic condition, this predicate is utterly false. A significant minority of Americans — nobody knows exactly how many, but the psychologist Robert Altemeyer estimates around 25% — crave authoritarian order over facts. Indeed, Altemeyer's studies repeatedly show that this minority, for all intents and purposes, completely disregards facts, logical arguments, and internal contradictions in their own positions. So when the authoritarian minority swings into action, as in recent, violent demonstrations against health care reform at town hall meetings, it should not get any sort of hearing, let alone a respectful one, nor should its Republican puppet-masters, because neither have anything of value to say.
August 3, 2009
The Incredible Tenacity of the Ruling Class
Or, Obama Does Foreign Policy
By Werther*
How much has really changed in the governing structure of the United States in the last seven months? Beyond a bit of superficial sloganeering, it would appear that the status quo has triumphed:
· We traded a smaller troop presence in Iraq for a larger one in Afghanistan. U.S. combat deaths in the latter conflict were higher in July than at any time in the nearly nine years of U.S. occupation of that country.
· The Obama campaign's (admittedly mild) critique of the Bush administration's comprehensive assault on the Constitution has turned out to be so much electoral humbug. The Obama administration appears to have no intention of rolling back Bush's executive coup d'état.
· Less than a year after a near collapse of credit in the world economic system, the bankers are back in the saddle, with abundant assistance from an administration that ran on a platform of change. Goldman Sachs alumni rule the roost at Treasury and on the White House economic team.
· Health care "reform" has turned into a riot of bribery and corruption. [1] In the end, one suspects there will be a thousand-page bill of some sort, but K Street will ensure that nothing gets enacted unless its clients' revenue streams are maintained, or if possible expanded.
Continue reading "The Incredible Tenacity of the Ruling Class"...
Reply to the Campaign for Peace and Democracy
By Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
The Campaign for Peace and Democracy [1] has chosen to interpret our "Riding the 'Green Wave'" article [2] as a "vitriolic and dishonest attack" on its authors, and an "offensive impugning of [their] integrity." In fact, it is nothing of the sort. Instead, it is concerned with issues of central importance to the left in the United States and beyond. Not only did we make no derogatory personal remarks, we find nothing objectionable in four people expressing "solidarity with the Iranian protesters." But the CPD's "Question & Answer on the Iran Crisis" has a grander purpose, which is didactic, educational — to instruct the left and American progressives about how we should understand and respond to events inside Iran (reinforced by the arrogant notion that anyone who doesn't get it might be guilty of suffering "leftist confusion" [3]). For this reason, its Q&A operates on a categorically different level. Hence, our sole reason for taking it up.
Continue reading "Reply to the Campaign for Peace and Democracy"...
