Saturday: Hillary, Jeannette, and Perditta

Posted: April 2, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Hillary Clinton, Human Rights, morning reads, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 48 Comments

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives for the funeral mass for former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, Thursday, March 31, 2011 in New York.

Morning, news junkies. Note: You’ll have to read all the way to the bottom of this one for the tie-in to “Jeannette” and “Perditta.” There’s also some comic relief from the Onion waiting there at the end as a reward for making it through. My Saturday reads are often on the ‘heavy’ side I know, and this weekend is no exception.

I’d like to start with a story I touched on in a roundup about a month ago. You may recall that I linked to Glen Ford/BAR’s commentary on the pogrom-like massacre against sub-Saharan black migrant workers in Libya, at the hands of so-called anti-Gaddafi rebels. The Western media has virtually blacked this story out–or if they are covering it in any substantive or sustained way other than in passing, I must have missed it over the past month. Leave it to the WSWS (World Socialist Web Site) to have one of the few informative pieces I’ve seen covering the story at all (h/t paperdoll for pointing me to it.) The WSWS piece references a March 22nd article, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung by Gunnar Heinsohn (which cites as its source a report by Zimbabwean journalist and documentary filmmaker Farai Sevenzo).

From the WSWS link:

The article states:“Because mercenaries from Chad and Mali are presumed to be fighting for him [Gaddafi], the lives of a million African refugees and thousands of African migrants are at risk. A Turkish construction worker told the British radio station BBC: ‘We had seventy to eighty people from Chad working for our company. They were massacred with pruning shears and axes, accused by the attackers of being Gaddafi’s troops. The Sudanese people were massacred. We saw it for ourselves.’ ”

The zombie in place of the fourth estate, our corporate US media, has either glossed over or omitted the massacre altogether. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera, unsurprisingly, has had more to say on the killings than I’ve seen from CNN or Fox over the last few months combined. Again, from the WSWS link:

On February 28, the Arab TV station Al Jazeera reported the racist massacre of black African workers by so-called “freedom fighters” as follows: “Dozens of workers from sub-Saharan Africa, it is feared, have been killed and hundreds are hiding because angry opponents of the government are hunting down black African mercenaries, witnesses reported…. According to official reports, about 90 Kenyans and 64 people from southern Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Zambia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and Burundi landed in Nairobi today.

One of them, Julius Kiluu, a 60-year-old construction manager, told Reuters: ‘We were attacked by people from the village. They accused us of being murderous mercenaries. But in reality they simply refuse to tolerate us. Our camp was burnt down. Our company and our embassy helped us get to the airport.’“Hundreds of black immigrants from the poorest African countries, who work mainly as low-wage day labourers in Libya, have been wounded by the rebels. From fear of being killed, some of them have refrained from going to a doctor.”

I went digging for the Al Jazeera report:

“But why is nobody concerned about the plight of sub-Saharan African migrants in Libya? As victims of racism and ruthless exploitation, they are Libya’s most vulnerable immigrant population, and their home country governments do not give them any support,” Hein de Haas, a senior fellow with the International Migration Institute, writes in his blog.

In clicking on the link to de Haas’ blog and perusing the comments, I stumbled upon a link to this February blog post at the Independent by Michael Mumisa: Is Al-Jazeera TV complicit in the latest vilification of Libya’s Blacks?

Mumisa wrote:

Even Al-Jazeera TV has based most of its news coverage of bands of marauding savage Africans on information posted via tweeter, facebook, and other social networks. That there may be African mercenaries operating in Libya is very possible but there are also credible reports from Serbian military sources as well as other Western agencies that Serbian mercenaries are fighting to protect Muammar Gaddafi. Yet nothing has been said about Gaddafi’s Serbian and Russian mercenaries.

Black Africans have always been a ‘visible’ and persecuted minority in Libya. By giving credence to potentially dangerous and unverified reports and rumours posted on social networks without taking into consideration the racial context of Libyan society Al-Jazeera and other foreign media outlets are complicit in the latest vilification and scapegoating of Libya’s Black minorities and its African migrant workers.

I don’t claim to be an expert on what’s happening on the ground in Libya, but I would like some answers on the deaths of these migrant workers. I would really love to hear someone put this humanitarian issue to Madame President Hillary Clinton for comment.

Switching gears now… because yep, you heard me correctly…

I just called her Madame President Hillary Clinton.

If the aliens visiting for the upcoming royal wedding were to observe what was going on right now, what else would they conclude? Hillary’s leading, Obama’s not, and everyone knows it.

Nothing new there, of course, except for the part about everyone knowing it. If Obama is the Where’s Waldo president, our media was the Where’s Waldo fourth estate in 2008, as well as during the entire past decade. That Where’s Waldo media, by the way, very much included left blogistan, guilty of its own version of the “Village” insularity and hegemony in the traditional media that the prog blogs cut their teeth railing against.

In 2008, access was more important than our country’s future to journalists and bloggers, and I have no reason to believe in 2012, the story will be any different.

Which brings me to my next set of links…

Hillary, Obama, Polls, and 2012/The Donald Goes Birther week-in-review

The latest results are from a March 25-27 Gallup poll conducted while the United States was actively involved in enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya, a policy Clinton reportedly advocated. The same poll finds Clinton rated more positively than other top administration officials. Obama receives a 54% favorable rating, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, 52%, and Vice President Joe Biden, 46%.

  • A CNN/Opinion research poll from March 11 to 13 yielded pretty much the same results: 2 in 3 Americans have a favorable opinion of Hillary Clinton, with 92% of Democrats, 64% of Independents, and 35% of Republicans (or 83% of liberals, 80% of moderates, and 42% of conservatives) giving her a thumbs up. (That’s nearly identical to the Gallup findings from the end of March: 92% of Dems, 62% of Indies, and 40% of Repubs.) How’s that for “likeable enough” and “polarizing”? Agree or disagree with her, what people have for Hillary–which Obama can’t win with his empty speeches and voting “present”–is respect for her substance, diligence, and commitment. You not only know where she stands on Libya, you know she won’t half-ass it, she won’t vote present like Obama and she won’t cut Bush-like corners either–it’s clear that she’s giving it her all and she’s all in, even if you disagree with her.

It doesn’t look like Florida will be losing its status as one of the most competitive states in the country at the Presidential level next year- voters in the state are almost evenly divided on Barack Obama’s job performance and although he leads all six of the Republicans we tested him against, some of the margins are quite close. […] Mitt Romney does the best, trailing Obama 46-44. […] former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who trails Obama 48-45 in the state. Obama would start out in a slightly healthier position against four other Republicans we tested. He leads Rudy Giuliani by 6 points at 48-42, Mike Huckabee by 7 at 50-43, Newt Gingrich by 8 at 50-42, and Sarah Palin by 13 at 52-39.

Obama’s not likely to win Michigan by his blowout margin of 16 points in 2008 again but if the state voted today he would have an easier time taking it than either John Kerry in 2004 or Al Gore in 2000 did. Mitt Romney does the best of the Republicans against Obama, but still trails 48-41. […] Obama could be vulnerable in Michigan for sure. But consider this- despite that weak 78% approval with Democrats, he gets 85-90% of the Democratic vote against each of these five Republicans. There are enough Democrats who don’t like Obama that a Republican could get the support necessary across party lines to win the state- it’s just far from clear that any of these Republicans could get the support necessary across party lines to win the state.

  • And, in more “coming home to Obama” news… according to a Harvard survey, the “Waiting on the World to Change” generation has fallen back into their Obama-Hope coma (via TPM). If you read the fine print, though, the survey was taken from February 11 to March 2, i.e. before Obama’s (non-)war in Libya. Regardless, it’s not like younger voters are going to vote for whatever horrific candidate the GOP nominates anyway. But, will they show up with the enthusiasm of “being part of something historic and cool” that they did in 2008? I officially left the under 30 demographic last week, and one of the saddest things to watch about US politics over the last three years is how Obama crushed some pretty earnest, if misplaced, idealism on the part of many of my and my kid sister’s peers. I’m sure they’ll still vote for him, but it will be out of fear of the Republican being worse, not out of hope. Obama 2012 is all about cynicism. So was Obama 2008. Again, people just didn’t know it yet.
  • Also buried in the Harvard survey under the headline is this finding: 42% of young voters approve of Obama on the economy, while 55% disapprove. So, it’s not like “kids today” are completely oblivious to their own destruction under this president. There’s just no meaningful alternative.

There’s a good chance that Trump’s flirtation with the GOP will be over as soon as this season of Celebrity Apprentice ends, and that his real motivation is jealousy that Obama is starring in what he sees as the world’s highest-rated reality-TV show: President of the United States. But if you think there’s any chance he’ll actually throw his hat in the ring, consider this: The only consistent position Trump has taken so far is that in 2011, he’s against whatever Obama is for.

Hillaryland

  • This one is a bit of a ‘where foreign policy meets domestic policy’ read…[USAID’s Rajiv] Shah: GOP budget would kill 70,000 children. Josh Rogin at FP’s The Cable has the details at the link. Once again, I must point out that we have a Madame President Hillary Clinton on the global stage at a time when her strength, stature, and ‘smart’ power on the domestic stage could have been very well-utilized. (As, Jon Corzine let slip at a party in the summer of 2010… “She would have been able to handle this Congress.”) Still, Hillary and her people at the State Department are doing everything they can from within their foreign policy context to push back on the GOP’s fiscal irresponsibility.

Japan

Japanese authorities on Friday were struggling with a new problem at the devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant: where to put tons of radioactive water.

Afghanistan

This Day in History (April 2nd)

Stressors the general public typically don’t have to deal with such as deployments, temporary duty assignments, permanent change of station assignments every few years or less, exercises and so many other requirements can take a toll on these families, since autistic kids have such a hard time adapting to change.

Following her election as a representative, Rankin’s entrance into Congress was delayed for a month as congressmen discussed whether a woman should be admitted into the House of Representatives.

Finally, on April 2, 1917, she was introduced in Congress as its first female member. The same day, President Woodrow Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress and urged a declaration of war against Germany. On April 4, the Senate voted for war by a wide majority, and on April 6 the vote went to the House. Citing public opinion in Montana and her own pacifist beliefs, Jeannette Rankin was one of only 50 representatives who voted against the American declaration of war. For the remainder of her first term in Congress, she sponsored legislation to aid women and children, and advocated the passage of a federal suffrage amendment.

  • “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” –Jeannette Rankin
  • Back in January, I wrote about the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, so instead of reinventing the wheel, I’ll just quote myself:

Today is January 15, 2011… Eighty-two years ago, in 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr. was born. Thirty-nine years later, in 1968, the Jeannette Rankin Brigade gathered in DC to protest the Vietnam War (links go to two great photos). At the end of the march, the 88-year old Rankin–on behalf of a delegation of women that included Coretta Scott King–presented to then-House Speaker John McCormack a petition calling for an end to the war (link takes you to another amazing photo).

Updates and Closing Thoughts on Libya

FP’s latest brief at the time of my writing this post (Friday mid-morning/noon):

A senior aide to Saif al-Qaddafi is reportedly in London for secret talks with British authorities. Following yesterday’s defection of Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, rumors have swirled of other high-profile defections from the Qaddafi regime. Ali Abdussalam el-Treki, a former U.N. envoy who had also reportedly defected on Thursday, denied the rumors, but said that he is trying to negotiate a ceasefire. Libyan officials have now posted guards to prevent other defectors from leaving.Members of NATO are warning Libya’s rebels not to attack civilians, or they will face the same airstrikes that have been directed at Qaddafi’s troops. The BBC is reporting that seven civilians were allegedly killed in a coalition airstrike near Brega.

More from the BBC link just above:

All the dead were between the ages of 12 and 20, Dr Refardi said. Nato says it is investigating the claim.

The news comes as opposition leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil said the rebels would agree to a ceasefire if Col Muammar Gaddafi’s troops withdrew from cities.

“We agree on a ceasefire on the condition that our brothers in the western cities have freedom of expression and also that the forces that are besieging the cities withdraw,” he told a news conference in the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

But he said the rebels would not back down on their demand that Col Gaddafi must go.

So it sounds like Gaddafi’s hold is sliding, but who knows how things will be by the time you see this post on Saturday morning.

At any rate, I wonder what Jeannette Rankin and her anti-war brigade would say to this woman (via FP/Blake Hounshell, A Bright Voice from Libya’s Darkness):

What does grief and courage sound like? It sounds a lot like the voice of Perditta Nabbous, the wife of Libyan citizen journalist Mohammed Nabbous, 27, who was shot and killed last Saturday by forces loyal to Muammar al-Qaddafi. Mohammed was the charismatic voice and face of Libya al-Hurra, the online TV station he set up in the early days of the uprising. Mo, as his many fans and supporters around the world called him, was attacked while trying to record footage from Benghazi.

[…]

She is 8 months pregnant. “I want Mohamed’s child to live,” she told me.

Her voice growing stronger, she called for the U.S.-led strikes on Qaddafi’s air defenses and troops to continue. Here it is in her own words. I can’t put it any more powerfully than this:

“We started this in a pure way, but he turned it bloody. Thousands of our men, women, and children have died.

We just wanted our freedom, that’s all we wanted, we didn’t want power. Before, we could not do a single thing if it was not the way he wanted it.

All we wanted was freedom. All we wanted was to be free. We have paid with our blood, with our families, with our men, and we’re not going to give up.

We are still going to do that no matter what it takes, but we need help. We want to do this ourselves, but we don’t have the weapons, the technology, the things we need. I don’t want anyone to say that Libya got liberated by anybody else.

If NATO didn’t start moving when they did, I assure you, I assure you, half of Benghazi if not more would have been killed. If they stop helping us, we are going to be all killed because he has no mercy anymore.

Remember Rankin’s warning that “you can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”

I’m torn between Jeannette’s voice and Perditta’s.

I find myself increasingly hoping against hope that things turn out for the best in Libya and the rest of the MENA region and for us all.

That’s pretty much it for me. What’s on your blogging list this Saturday?

If you made it to the end, here you go… as promised… The Onion: American Dream Declared Dead As Final Believer Gives Up…

[originally posted at Let Them Listen; crossposted at Taylor Marsh and Liberal Rapture]

The Battle for Human Rights in Egypt

Posted: March 9, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Human Rights, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , | 31 Comments

This is a follow-up to my post about Egypt and the million woman march. I put up some more news excerpts last night in the comments… I thought I’d bring some of them up here on the frontpage along with a few other updates.

Before I do that, here’s some footage from Tahrir. This one is a brief clip of the “shouting match” from CNN:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

I don’t know about you, but I thought the smarmy expressions on the face of the young men who were shouting at the women said a lot. They seemed to have nothing better to do than to taunt these women demanding their rights.

Seemed reminiscent of this video awhile back where a young Yemeni girl responded to a bunch of young men telling her to wear a veil and all this other nonsense — she seemed to be an old soul with great wisdom and quick wit as she told them, among other things, “go get a job, all of you, sitting here like a bunch of bums.”

Here’s a link to a video from Tahrir posted on Facebook that Woman Voter sent to me. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but the unsettled expressions and voices of the women at the beginning of this as at least one woman appears to be grabbed and hassled have stuck with me.

Ok, now for the excerpts and updates.

A lot of things went wrong yesterday in Tahrir, and women were doomed it seems. There was an outbreak of tension between Copts and Muslims that took away some of the activism and attention.

Irish Times:

A worker living in Manshiyet Nasser holds a paper reading: 'Christian and Muslim, we are Egyptian' in eastern Cairo on March 9, where clashes between Egyptian Christians and Muslims occurred on Tuesday night. (Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)

Part of the reason the women’s march failed was that many decided to participate in a sit-in staged by Coptic Christians in front of the radio and television building, a few hundred metres from the square. The Copts are protesting the burning of a church in Helwan province during a Christian-Muslim clash over a romance between a Christian man and a Muslim woman, and are urging army protection for Copts who fled the village but seek to return.

Here is an Al Jazeera report from today with more on what happened with the clashes between Copts and Muslims yesterday. At least 11 people have died according to this, though I am seeing the count has been upped to 13 in some other reports.

From the Al Jazeera link:

At least 11 people have been killed and around 100 others injured in religious clashes with Muslims in the Egyptian capital Cairo.

A security source told Al Jazeera that of the 11 that were killed on Tuesday, six were Coptic, five were Muslim and that at least 25 people were arrested by the country’s military police for their involvement in the clashes.

The deaths on Tuesday occurred in the working-class district of Moqattam after at least 1,000 Copts gathered to protest the burning of a church last week.

It was the second burst of sectarian fighting in as many days and the latest in a string of violent protests over a variety of topics as simmering unrest continues nearly a month after mass protests led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.

[…]

The protest outside Cairo’s radio and television building also came a day after at least 2,000 Copts demanded the re-building of the torched church, and that those responsible be brought to justice.

The Shahedain [Two Martyrs] church, in the Helwan provincial city of Sol, was set ablaze on Friday after clashes between Copts and Muslims left at least two people dead.

The violence was triggered by a feud between two families, which disapproved of a romantic relationship between a Christian man and a Muslim woman in Sol.

Here’s another Al Jazeera report about more clashes erupting in Tahrir today.

Also, an informative feature over at the Christian Science Monitor (from which I got the photo above) that gives a quick click-through overview on some background about the Copts and the tension — Copt-Muslim clash in Cairo renews question: Who are the Copts?

Anyhow, getting back to the women’s march. It seems like women’s rights, as always, got overshadowed yesterday and energies got divided between causes and injustice that all deserve attention.

This sort of goes along with what I’ve been discussing in the comments… women need strength in numbers here and really strong organization because this is going to be a very long hard road… this Women’s March was announced on the fly to coincide with International Women’s Day. I’m very proud of those who turned up and fought back what happened yesterday in Tahrir… I just hope as they continue to organize that they take time before the next women’s march or event. What looked like protests materializing overnight in Egypt over the last few months were really months and months in the making after the murder of Khaled Said. Women are up against the thugs who showed up yesterday and their ilk as well as a media filter that will say women aren’t turning out for themselves, etc.

Especially when just as here in the US we have the Phyllis Schlaflys… there are women in Egypt who are working for the patriarchy too. It’s not just the men saying “go home, wash clothes.” Again as I mentioned yesterday, this has written all over it shades of the “Iron My Shirt“ chant that reared its ugly head when Hillary vied for the presidency here in the US. Come to think of it, it’s also the perfect bookend to the “When Will that Stupid Bitch Quit” drumbeat that she and her supporters faced throughout the primaries and pretty much since before she even ran!

Take the following from the New Yorker News Desk’s report on yesterday’s events:

Men were hardly the only dissenting voices. At one point, a woman in a niqab began screaming at a cluster of people. Her son had died in the protests, and the conduct of the people in Tahrir—particularly the uncovered women—was inappropriate. They were dating, she insisted, not protesting. It was a sad echo of a rumor levelled at the protesters before Mubarak’s resignation, accusing them of KFC-fuelled courtship. Other women objected to the feminist values being voiced, which, they felt, were old-fashioned. Alia Mossallam, a student and writer, said, “There has always been a female presence. If you set yourself apart, you make yourself a spectacle.” Two young women said, simply, “Egypt is in a dangerous time right now. We should wait.”

Dating not protesting? *Headdesk*

So I suppose in 2008 we weren’t campaigning for Hillary, we were just having a big lesbo orgy out in public (remember, the Matt Taibbis called Hillary rallies the “Lifetime demographic”).

Women wouldn’t have to “set themselves apart” if their economic, social, and political rights were adequately protected by law and in practice.

When our rights to political protest or expression are so ubiquitously dismissed as “dating” or “Lifetime programming,” be it in Egypt or the US, then yes, we have to set ourselves apart and demand for what is rightfully ours.

As the quote that inspired the name of my blog goes:

“There are some who question the reason for this conference. Let them listen to the voices of women in their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces.” –Hillary Rodham Clinton, Beijing 1995

I didn’t like it when the youth movement in Egypt gathering to demand their rights was dismissed as a “facebook party” either, or when the workers in Wisconsin and other states doing the same similarly met sneers that they were Democratic party lemmings, etc. It takes a lot to get people past complacency and out to protest in the streets.

Workers, young people, seniors, and women all have rights and one of those rights includes the rights to protest, dissent, and civil disobedience. If all people were doing at any of these protests was socializing and partying, there wouldn’t be so much hostile resistance. There wouldn’t be violent thugs, there wouldn’t be police state style crackdowns, and there wouldn’t be an effort to annihilate the rights to collectively bargain itself.

People around the world are gathering to demand their rights and they are threatening the status quo bigtime. We see the fear reflected in all the pushback this demand for equality is creating.

More from the New Yorker:

Still, on the elevated concrete median across the street from the tents, Wassef was glowing at the turnout, which he estimated at a thousand. “I am ecstatic,” he said. There had been some negative feedback on the Facebook page, but “you can’t print taboos and expect all positive feedback.” Most of the men on the median were repeating the same argument as that in the square: a female President was forbidden by Islam. But the women were arguing back, and that was important. “It’s like lancing an abscess. What’s coming out is disgusting, but it needs to be done,” Wassef said.

Wassef is the guy who put up the facebook page calling for the march. I was wary of what would happen when I heard about the march because it all sounded so haphazard and hastily organized to coincide with International Women’s Day, but I agree with that quote in bold emphasis about lancing an abscess. Again, I just hope women and like-minded men get the time they need to build up the strength in numbers they deserve and need.

Which brings me to a few other things I wanted to highlight.

While nothing that happened was terribly surprising yesterday, given the history and the attack on Lara Logan, I noticed in a lot of these reports, particularly Nima Elbagir’s reporting to CNN, that reporters emphasized how there were men marching with women on behalf of women’s rights. Of course it was mostly women, but there seems to have been more men there than one would have thought or enough to have made all the journalists take particular note of it. Men even formed a human chain around the women. Unfortunately the thugs outnumbered them by a lot and broke through.

Since so much of patriarchy is deeply embedded within attitudes–and those attitudes can be held by women too–I think it is important that women for women work together with the men who do truly seem to be like-minded. I know most men won’t stand up for women and that ultimately women are the key to progress for women, but with so many women still caught in selling the rest of us out, I think allies in this fight are important wherever we can find them, and that the women in Egypt have found some does strike me as one of the few bright notes in this story, along with the fact of course that the brave women who showed up didn’t stay silent and fought back.

Also, another point from the Nima Elbagir report. In the youtube that I linked to above (at around the 2:40 mark for anyone interested), Nima talks about how just the leaflets alone were a point of contention–one of the leaflets said “we demand control of our reproductive rights”–and how men considered it shameful for women to be distributing materials with words like that printed on them.

Again, the contrast between that and the men who formed the human chain strikes me as poignant. Especially given the following (via the Guardian):

“Women were caught in the middle and groped,” witness Ahmad Awadalla said. “When I tried to defend them they said, ‘why are you defending women? Are you queer?’”

Once again misogyny and homophobia collide underscoring that this is a fight for human rights for every last one of us. All of us–women or man, young or old, working or middle class, gay or straight, Christian or Muslim or anything else, white, black, and everything in between, and on and on–we all share a stake in this fight, and we’re all connected. The forces trying to convince that we’re not are trying to break up the strength in numbers built in to our human coalition.

One last excerpt from the New Yorker link:

The men were particularly incensed at the notion that a woman could be President of Egypt. It was, they argued, against a hadith which states that men should not take orders from women. “Don’t you obey your mother?” wondered a colleague of mine, an Egyptian whose style of dress often causes her to be mistaken for a foreigner. “I obey religion,” he replied.

“They were saying that my opinion did not exist,” my colleague said. “Still, when I asked them to step back, they stepped back.”

When I read that, I couldn’t help but think of the following 1948 Olive Oyl for President cartoon (a reworking of the 1932 Betty Boop for president cartoon that was released just days before FDR was elected)… if only all these people who fear women having any sort of power got a metaphorical thwap from Olive Oyl’s skillet and had the dream that Popeye has…

Monday Reads

Posted: February 28, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: academia, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, collective bargaining, Diplomacy Nightmares, education, Foreign Affairs, Global Financial Crisis, Human Rights, Libya, U.S. Politics, unemployment, voodoo economics, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , | 15 Comments

Good Morning!

Okay, so I’m going to show you two nifty pie charts first at The Business Insider.   They basically show how the federal balance is extremely unbalanced because expenses are growing and revenues are not growing at all.  Henry Blodgett correctly points out that there’s quite a bit of growth in ‘entitlements’.  Let me just point out that all this makes complete sense to me  What do you get in an economy that has normalized around a 10 percent unemployment rate or higher if you count the things like disenfranchised workers and the underemployed and couple that with year after year after year after year of excessive tax cuts on the uberrich who happen to be the only ones making money?  Well, you get more and more people that are reliant on unemployment and other government ‘entitlements’ and you get a huge revenue gap.  This is about the most careless set of policy choices made that I’ve seen since I first read up on the Hoover administration and the start of the Great Depression.

The “expense” pie is growing like gangbusters, driven by the explosive growth of the entitlement programs that no one in government even has the balls to talk about. “Revenue” is barely growing at all.

As we’ll illustrate with more of Mary’s charts next week, the US cannot grow its way out of this problem. It needs to cut spending, specifically entitlement spending. We hereby announce that we’ll give a special gold star to the first “leader” with the guts to say that publicly.

I’ll give a box of gold stars to any one that points out to this blowhard that the way to remove the growing entitlements is to put people back to work.  Also, giving tax money to rich people so they can invest in the BRIC economies and buy land where their money is parked in the Bahamas or Grand Caymans is a really, really stupid proposition.  We’ve needed a real jobs program for some times.  People with jobs pay taxes, buy things that are taxed, and don’t require entitlements.  How absolutely stupid do you have to be to not get that?  I don’t even need all those economics and finance degrees to figure that one out.

In the Friday Reads I mentioned that Fox News’ Roger Ailes was caught on tape encouraging colleagues to lie to Federal Investigators.  Well, it seems that lying has finally caught up with one Republican operative.  Maybe people will wake up to the Faux News’ and their dirty tricks now.  Here’s what Barry Ritholtz had to say about his scoop on the indictment.

Here’s what I learned recently: Someone I spoke with claimed that Ailes was scheduled to speak at their event in March, but canceled. It appears that Roger’s people, ostensibly using a clause in his contract, said he “cannot appear for legal reasons.”

I asked “What, precisely, does that mean?”

The response: “Roger Ailes will be indicted — probably this week, maybe even Monday.”

Well, it’s Monday. Does Rupert Murdoch know where Roger Ailes is?   Some times watching Karma unfold is a delightful thing.

I’m not sure if you’re a big enough masochist to spend time with the Sunday news shows anymore, but I do try to catch Christiane Amanpour and she delivered an interesting program yesterday.  She had an exclusive interview with one of Gadhaffi’s sons.  It was extremely interesting and I would recommend you go watch that segment. Amanpour actually traveled to Tripoli this weekend.  We will now refer to the son as Tripoli Saif al-Islam Gadhafi since he seems about as in touch with reality as Baghdad Bob did back in the day.

There was a “big, big gap between reality and the media reports,” Gadhafi told Amanpour. “The whole south is calm. The west is calm. The middle is calm. Even part of the east.”

In response to President Barack Obama’s call for Moammar Gadhafi to step down and the U.N. Security Council’s unanimous vote to impose an arms embargo on Libya and urge nations to freeze Libyan assets, Gadhafi’s son was defiant.

“Listen, nobody is leaving this country. We live here, we die here,” he insisted. “This is our country. The Libyans are our people. And for myself, I believe I am doing the right thing.”

“The President of the U.S. has called on your father to step down. How do you feel about that?” Amanpour asked.

“It’s not an American business, that’s number one,” said Gadhafi, who was dressed casually as he spoke with Amanpour. “Second, do they think this is a solution? Of course not.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting kind of tired of watching these jerks that we supported for some time prove exactly what is meant by the label “brutal dictator”.  Could we just once fund and support some one like His Holiness the Dali Lama for a change?  It’s no wonder we still get called ugly Americans.

Speaking of Ugly Americans responsible for diplomatic nightmares, Paul Wolfowitz showed up on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on CNN on Sunday. Could some one please tell the media we don’t need to hear from the people that screwed up Middle East Policy any more?  Why do I keep seeing this man’s face despite his obvious failures with Iraq policy and peccadilloes made public during his time at the World Bank?  I did want to point you to Zakaria’s interview with Michael Lewis on global  financial crisis. The video is here. He has some interesting thing to say about banks in Greece, Ireland, and here.  Listen for this part:

LEWIS: …And the –the anger – the anger about the Wall Street bailouts, I think, is the beginning of the Tea Party.  I mean the – the injustice of people being rewarded for failure and – and supported by the public purse, that was the source of the original outrage.

ZAKARIA: But it went in a libertarian direction…

LEWIS: It did…It – but – but a qualified libertarian direction, because a true libertarian would be outraged that these Wall Street banks are still being subsidized by the government.  And there doesn’t seem to be any move on the right to – to remove those subsidies, not any – any serious one…But – but the politi – our leadership doesn’t have an interest in – a leadership that is intent on still stabilizing the financial system doesn’t have an interest in calling attention to the outrages of the financial system.  So I think they – Wall Street got very lucky.

Wall Street did not get very lucky.  Wall Street basically has a friend in the White House and tons of people in the Treasury Department.   The Tea Party was distracted by the Health Care Bill.  The kleptocracy is still at it.  Listen to the interview, it’s an earful! Many of us think that were going to get a repeat of the global financial crisis some time soon.  Lewis and I aren’t alone on that thought.

One of the things that’s really making me mad about the current conversation on budget cuts and higher education is the public’s ignorance on just exactly how many states have disabled tenure these days.  Tenure has long been a pet peeve of right wing ideologues who feel that every one should be terminated like they are in the private sector.  Basically, the private sector thrives on political firings and uses payroll cuts as the first line of defense when the bottom line is failing because of their bad, short-sighted, and overly-political decisions.

Here’s a list of states decimating tenure as we speak from articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education.  You know, I’m really sorry that people have to work for private corporations and that their lives are subject to the whims of really mean people, but it’s really no excuse to take it out on those of us that have tried to carve a better way to exist. Take my word for it.  Get yourself a union and they won’t be able to take advantage of you with out taking on a a million other people who have your back!   Those of us in the public sector are willing to forego short term salary highs for long term job security.  It’s evident that a new crop of governors want every one as miserable as employees in the private sector now.  If they intend to do this to us, then I want those seven to eight digits salaries I’d be paid for the 3-5 year short brutal career on Wall Street as a PhD in Financial Economics. I even added a few old links to show you that this is nothing new.   Believe me, tenure isn’t what most people outside of academic think it is …

From Louisiana (this week):

The University of Louisiana system’s Board of Supervisors on Friday voted to approve new rules that will allow its institutions to more quickly dismiss faculty members, even those with tenure, whose programs have been closed.

At a time when the state’s financial climate makes it difficult for campuses to determine their budgets from year to year, that kind of flexibility is key, system officials said. But professors at the board meeting, including representatives of each of the system’s eight campuses, told the supervisors that such a move would erode the protection tenure provides and could ultimately make the system’s institutions unattractive to job seekers and lead current faculty members to leave.

From Nebraska (2oo3):

The University of Nebraska at Lincoln is seeking to eliminate the jobs of 15 tenured faculty members as part of its latest round of budget cuts.

The proposed dismissals, which Chancellor Harvey Perlman announced this month, would save Nebraska about $2.7-million. They are part of a plan to reduce the university’s budget by $26-million, or 12 percent, in the wake of substantial state budget cuts. The new cuts come on the heels of layoffs, proposed in March, that would affect 55 faculty

From Florida (last November) where the attempt to layoff tenured faculty was blocked by an arbitrator.  Notice the decision protected the union faculty but not the nonunion faculty.

An independent arbitrator on Friday ordered Florida State University to rescind layoff notices to several tenured faculty members and slammed how administrators there had decided which jobs would be cut.

In a major victory for the state’s faculty union, Stanley H. Sergent, a Sarasota-based lawyer picked by the university and the union to arbitrate the dispute, held that the university had failed to clearly justify its choices to eliminate certain positions, and had violated a provision of its faculty contract calling for it to try to protect the jobs of those faculty members who had continuously worked there the longest.

In his 83-page decision, Mr. Sergent wrote that the only reason the university had declared certain departments “suspended” was “to allow the effective layoff of all faculty and the selective recall of certain faculty,” apparently for the sake of creating a subterfuge to avoid having to comply with a contractual requirement that it lay off tenured faculty members last. Mr. Sergent characterized the reasoning used by a dean in eliminating one faculty member’s job as “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.”

The arbitrator’s decision applies only to 12 tenured faculty members who belong to the campus chapter of the United Faculty of Florida, and does not cover nine other tenured faculty members who do not belong to the union and also received notices of pending layoffs last year.

From Washington State (May2009):

Community colleges in Washington State could soon be able to lay off tenured faculty members much faster than normal, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

At its regularly scheduled meeting next month, the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges will decide whether to declare a financial emergency — a move allowed by a state law passed in 1981 to deal with budget crunches. Such an emergency would speed up the process for laying off tenured faculty members in that they would get only 60 days’ notice of layoffs and the grounds on which they could appeal the decision would be limited, the Post-Intelligencer reported.

I would also like to take this space to mention that I no longer have access to Social Security and that my state pension and the matches that I get from the State basically are what the private sector donates to social security on the behalf of private sector workers.  Many states have pension plans that replace Social Security.  Therefore, I’m personally not getting any thing ‘special’ from taxpayers.  Also, when the defined benefit plan showed up short this year, they decreased the contributions to my optional retirement plan and the others who selected that option to make up the shortfall in the defined benefit pool. Wall Street stole my appreciation and then the state took more from me to pay for their problems in other folks’ annuities.  Other state employees–like me–paid for that shortfall.  It came from our compensation.  I’ve just about had it up to here with reading a bunch of grumbly idiots on other blogs that have no idea how state employee pensions are managed and funded.  If you want to go after high paying state employees that are worthless, try taking it out on the university football coaches and the damned governor’s staff for a change.  It’s not us little guys!

Anyway, it’s Monday morning and I’m a curmudgeon today.  Think I’ll spend the day with the TV off and I’ll stay here on Sky Dancing with the sane people!  Now, where’s my coffee?

What’s on your reading and blogging list?

Right off a Cliff

Posted: February 26, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, Barack Obama, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, collective bargaining, Corporate Crime, Democratic Politics, education, Environmental Protection, Federal Budget, Feminists, fundamentalist Christians, GLBT Rights, Human Rights, John Birch Society in Charge, Populism, Psychopaths in charge, Republican presidential politics, right wing hate grouups, Surreality, Team Obama, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , | 11 Comments

Where are mainstream Republicans these days? What has happened to the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower? Prior to the Reagan years, Republican women were front and center in volunteering for planned parenthood, supporting the ERA, and working for abortion rights. First Lady Betty Ford was a proud feminist and one of the first women to put women’s health issues–including women with drinking problems and breast cancer–on the map. President Richard Nixon was responsible for many of the agencies that protect the environment. The current party is chock-full of science denying Theocrats and economics-denying Corporate Fascists. It’s making a sham out of the two party system. We may now have a window open wide enough to stop some of this.  We should ready ourselves with the facts and act now.

An online conversation has been initiated with the publication of Ron Brownstein’s article in the National Journal on Thursday called ‘State’s Rights’. It is front and center in starting a discussion among Democratic bloggers, journalists, and other liberal/progressive sympathizers.  States rights was code for the right to own slaves during the first 100 years of this country’s existence.  It is now code for the right to discriminate against the GLBT community, insert the government into an individual woman’s gynecological care, and bust unions. The racial overtones have not gone away since the worst of the hateful verbiage is aimed at stopping any policy goal attempted by President Obama.

Any one who has read me over the last few years knows that I am not a big fan of this President and I’m even less of a fan of his zealous followers.  However, it would take a fairly dim bulb to not see the racism implicit in many of the Republican attacks against him. Attacks range from the extremely bizarre personal assertions that he is a secret Muslim, foreign born, and a devout socialist/communist to a complete rewrite of any policy initiative.

Obama is about as conservative of a Democrat as one can find these days which has been one of my issues with him all along.  His actions and words have not stopped the endless attacks on absolutely everything he attempts by Republicans and their monied interests.  These tactics were first used against former Democratic President Bill Clinton but have reached some kind of hyper-extortionate apex today.  It’s to the point that I firmly believe some of these Republican extremists would rather take the country down with them than negotiate something other than an ideologically pure outcome.  Brown’s article and examples focus on the current bloc of extremist Republican governors with their take no prisoners policies.  While his focus is mostly on the impact on Obama, I believe his larger point should entice us to think bigger.

But one senior Obama administration official, who also had a close view of Clinton’s interaction with Republican governors, contends that ideology is trumping interest for the governors in many of these new disputes. Health care reform, for instance, asks states for no new financial contribution to expand coverage through 2016 and only relatively small participation thereafter; because 60 percent of the uninsured live in the states where a Republican holds the governorship, their residents would receive the most new federal aid if the law survives. “One had the sense in the mid-1990s that conservative governors were doing whatever was in the best interest of their state,” the senior official said. “This time, the Republican governors appear determined to make an ideological point, even if it costs their state a great deal.”

Whatever the governors’ motivations (one man’s posturing, after all, is another man’s principle), their unreserved enlistment into Washington’s wars marks a milestone. It creates a second line of defense for conservatives to contest Obama even after he wins battles in Congress. It tears another hole in the fraying conviction that state capitals are less partisan than Washington. And it creates a precedent that is likely to encourage more guerrilla warfare between Democratic governors and a future Republican president.

American politics increasingly resembles a kind of total war in which each party mobilizes every conceivable asset at its disposal against the other. Most governors were once conscientious objectors in that struggle. No more.

I can remember attending Republican conventions in the early 1980s during the first hint of the unholy alliance between religious fanatics along the line of a Christian Taliban with the John Birch Society version of libertarians.  It was a terrifying spectacle.  At the time, the more pro-business and hoity-toity conservative elements in the party were willing to use them like pet pit bulls because they were incredibly organized at the grass roots level and they voted. Republicans traditionally had a much more difficult time turning out voters and their GOTV machines were dwarfed by the Democrats who could rely on well organized and managed union membership.  This is one of the reasons why there is also the huge attack on the last standing unions now.  They’re worth a fortune come election time and no Republican campaign strategist worth anything underestimates them.  We can clearly no longer underestimate the religious zealots or those gullible to the rants of Glenn Beck.  They’ve become a contagion.

Back in the day,  the young me argued that this form of big daddy government intervention put forth by religionists and Birchers was basically enabling powerful business monopolies and drop kicking the constitutional mandate to deny the establishing of a state religion.  It was against the very core ideology of  historical Republicanism.  I got no where.  This was especially true as Nixon’s southern strategy began to work its evil influence on bringing in the remaining racist elements of the old Dixiecrats who frankly were all for the government taking care of any one that wasn’t like them.  This added the last nail in the traditional coffin of the party of Lincoln. That sin is now manifesting in the xenophobia against Muslims and Hispanics in addition to African Americans topped by the anti-science bias from the religionists and the pro-monopoly market creation from the corporatists.

It appears that many old school Republicans now see the results of opening this Pandora’s box. They are horrified and have been trying to stuff the demons back into the chest.  Now, you see those same folks that opened their kennels filled with poodles to the pit bulls are now acting absolutely appalled by the rising influence of absolutely whacked extremists like Glenn Beck.  Scarborough, Rove, and Kristol are currently trying to put the Beckheads back into the box.  Those of us that don’t vote Republican could afford to ignore this if it were just some intraparty feud.  It’s gone beyond that with the rise of tea party hysterics and billionaire libertarian Daddy Warbucks’ propaganda machines. In many states, the Republican party infrastructure has been commandeered by the pit bulls. The poodles–like Arianna Huffington and Markos–have long left their confines. They are morphing traditional Democratic Party concerns.  The same divisive issues that used to motivate the base to do the GOTV and show up at the polls has managed to bring this new crop of Republican governors and congressional members to a critical mass.  They refuse any middle or even right of middle ground.  They won’t negotiate on the usual country club Republican issues. It’s no longer a GOTV ploy for them because they are true believers.

Steven Benen explores this quandry in his blog at WAPO today.

Keep in mind, it’s ideology, not practical concerns, that lie at the heart of these governors’ reactionary moves. The states turning down investments for high-speed rail, for example, were effectively handed a gift — jobs, economic development, improved infrastructure — but Republicans like Rick Scott and Scott Walker turned down the benefits because of a philosophical opposition, deliberately hurting their state in the process. The administration was effectively throwing a life-preserver to a Republican who’s drowning, only to be told, “We don’t like government life-preservers.”

The same is true of health care, which would be a boon to states, but which far-right governors resist for reasons that have nothing to do with public policy.

Bill Clinton faced a watered-down version of these Republican pit bulls over a decade ago.  Dealing with them is how he got his reputation for triangulation.  He seemed uniquely placed to make some small progress then–that now seems impossible now–because of his past position as a southern governor with a decidedly homespun and folksy manner.  President Obama has none of this going for him.  He is surrounded by Businesscrats that are unlikely to fill the void. The only thing he’s managed to do is to gain the ear of the Chamber of Commerce types.  These folks are hardly going to be sympathetic to social justice or middle class bread-and-butter issues.  Additionally, right wing media sources and timid main stream media sources are playing into the hands of the outrageous.  We have media enablers instead of investigative journalists.

That is why it is absolutely essential that whatever is left of the Democratic grassroots need to make one extremely loud noise right now.  It is unconscionable that a rewrite of history, science, and economic is taking place while many of us are simply standing around with gaping mouths.  I’ve spoken many times about the absolute lack of economics that is driving austerity programs.  It’s already showing signs of slowing economic growth down at a time when unemployment is unacceptably high. This is only going to multiply as the days and months unfold.  Ask yourself if we can really afford another recession?

I was also disheartened to read that science is not fairing well either. Scientific American has a thought provoking piece up on the overwhelming science behind global warming and climate change.Their title should be rhetorical but it is not: ‘Why Are Americans So Ill-Informed about Climate Change?’

Near the forum’s conclusion, Massachusetts Institute of Technology climate scientist Kerry Emanuel asked a panel of journalists why the media continues to cover anthropogenic climate change as a controversy or debate, when in fact it is a consensus among such organizations as the American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Physics, American Chemical Society, American Meteorological Association and the National Research Council, along with the national academies of more than two dozen countries.

“You haven’t persuaded the public,” replied Elizabeth Shogren of National Public Radio. Emanuel immediately countered, smiling and pointing at Shogren, “No, you haven’t.” Scattered applause followed in the audience of mostly scientists, with one heckler saying, “That’s right. Kerry said it.”

Such a tone of searching bewilderment typified a handful of sessions that dealt with the struggle to motivate Americans on the topic of climate change. Only 35 percent of Americans see climate change as a serious problem, according to a 2009 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

It’s a given that an organized and well-funded campaign has led efforts to confuse the public regarding the consensus around anthropogenic climate change.

These extremists are even rewriting the already right wing Ronald Reagan’s legacy to make it seem more extreme to support the legitimacy of their radical agendas.  Here’s an example I found this morning on ThinkProgress on Reagan’s views on unions. Scott Walker’s fantasy world includes his vision of being Reagan’s heir. Yet, here is Reagan himself on the union movement in Poland during one of his radio addresses to the nation.

REAGAN: Ever since martial law was brutally imposed last December, Polish authorities have been assuring the world that they’re interested in a genuine reconciliation with the Polish people. But the Polish regime’s action yesterday reveals the hollowness of its promises. By outlawing Solidarity, a free trade organization to which an overwhelming majority of Polish workers and farmers belong, they have made it clear that they never had any intention of restoring one of the most elemental human rights—the right to belong to a free trade union.

The one thing that I learned early on when dealing with these people from within the Republican party itself in the pre-Reagan and early Reagan days is that they believe their courses are so righteous that they will lie and do anything to support them.  If we do not hold their actions and lies to the light of day, our country will be completely overrun by by folks that are anti-science, anti-economics, anti-rational thought, and anti-democracy.  We’ll have a theocratic plutocracy in fairly short order.

It is absolutely imperative that we put pressure on the media and Democratic politicians to fact check these people, stand up to them, and expose their lies to the public.  It is possible that we’ve caught a tipping point in their overreach process. If this is the case, it means we have to work with the momentum now.  Nothing short of our democracy and our children’s future is at stake here.  We cannot be complacent and we cannot be left with mouths wide opened.  We also cannot rely on leadership from the very top.  If you’re in one of those states that is acting up, act now!!!  Find and support your version of the Wisconsin 14.

Guarded Responses vs Leadership

Posted: February 25, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: A My Pet Goat Moment, Barack Obama, collective bargaining, Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Libya, Surreality, Team Obama, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , | 27 Comments

I’ve got an on again off again relationship with Christopher Hitchens’ writings.  It frequently depends on the topic and frankly, how much he’s probably been drinking at that time.  He’s arrogant, curmudgeonly, erudite, and smug but always interesting to read.  Here’s something to chew on from his latest at Salon called ‘Is Barrack Obama Secretly Swiss?” on the President’s overly guarded response to the recent Arab uprisings.

This is not merely a matter of the synchronizing of announcements. The Obama administration also behaves as if the weight of the United States in world affairs is approximately the same as that of Switzerland. We await developments. We urge caution, even restraint. We hope for the formation of an international consensus. And, just as there is something despicable about the way in which Swiss bankers change horses, so there is something contemptible about the way in which Washington has been affecting—and perhaps helping to bring about—American impotence. Except that, whereas at least the Swiss have the excuse of cynicism, American policy manages to be both cynical and naive.

This has been especially evident in the case of Libya. For weeks, the administration dithered over Egypt and calibrated its actions to the lowest and slowest common denominators, on the grounds that it was difficult to deal with a rancid old friend and ally who had outlived his usefulness. But then it became the turn of Muammar Qaddafi—an all-round stinking nuisance and moreover a long-term enemy—and the dithering began all over again. Until Wednesday Feb. 23, when the president made a few anodyne remarks that condemned “violence” in general but failed to cite Qaddafi in particular—every important statesman and stateswoman in the world had been heard from, with the exception of Obama. And his silence was hardly worth breaking. Echoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had managed a few words of her own, he stressed only that the need was for a unanimous international opinion, as if in the absence of complete unity nothing could be done, or even attempted. This would hand an automatic veto to any of Qaddafi’s remaining allies. It also underscored the impression that the opinion of the United States was no more worth hearing than that of, say, Switzerland. Secretary Clinton was then dispatched to no other destination than Geneva, where she will meet with the U.N. Human Rights Council—an absurd body that is already hopelessly tainted with Qaddafi’s membership.

I have to admit that I’ve had my own concerns about our tepid national response to the incredible thuggish brutality going on in Libya.  First, there’s the news that helicopters were shooting at citizens in the streets. Then, there were the executions of Libyan soldiers who refused to follow the orders to shoot at citizens.  Finally, there’s the news of mercenaries paid sums to commit violence on whoever they find in the streets.  How much does it take for one to come out and say this is just plain evil and should stop now or else?

Obama’s made one tepid statement on Libya as well as one tepid statement on events at home that concern the stripping of collective bargaining rights from US workers.  Both should be low hanging fruit for any Democratic politician. Libya murdered all those Syracuse students in the Lockerbie bombing.  Unions fund and work tirelessly for their Democratic candidates including this President.  Obama’s sure coming up short on words these days for a man with legendary status as a speech giver and TV personality.  His new press secretary Jay Carney appears to be a Milquetoast spokesmodel also whose bland nonresponse responses must reflect the dithering at the top.

Okay, well, back to Hitchens for the strong words …

Evidently a little sensitive to the related charges of being a) taken yet again completely by surprise, b) apparently without a policy of its own, and c) morally neuter, the Obama administration contrived to come up with an argument that maximized every form of feebleness. Were we to have taken a more robust or discernible position, it was argued, our diplomatic staff in Libya might have been endangered. In other words, we decided to behave as if they were already hostages! The governments of much less powerful nations, many with large expatriate populations as well as embassies in Libya, had already condemned Qaddafi’s criminal behavior, and the European Union had considered sanctions, but the United States (which didn’t even charter a boat for the removal of staff until Tuesday) felt obliged to act as if it were the colonel’s unwilling prisoner. I can’t immediately think of any precedent for this pathetic “doctrine,” but I can easily see what a useful precedent it sets for any future rogue regime attempting to buy time. Leave us alone—don’t even raise your voice against us—or we cannot guarantee the security of your embassy. (It wouldn’t be too soon, even now, for the NATO alliance to make it plain to Qaddafi that if he even tried such a thing, he would lose his throne, and his ramshackle armed forces, and perhaps his worthless life, all in the course of one afternoon.)

I’ve always thought Hitchens to be  a war monger.  His foreign policy diatribes are usually way over the top for my taste but I have to admit that this particular opinion piece is spot on.  If we can’t use our position as the world’s superpower to at least publicly condemn these kinds of atrocities, what good are we?  There  has to be more to do here than just wait around until the tide shows some sign of turning.   I’m not suggesting we invade Tripoli but some kind of sign of moral comprehension of the situation–even if it’s just a toughly worded condemnation–would certainly create a signal that the US will not stand around silent while some crazed dictator slaughters his people.  Right now, it just seems like the U.S. is just going to sit on its thumbs and watch the slaughter.    White House responses to Egypt, Libya, and the suppression of labor in the U.S. feel like a series of  “The Pet Goat” reading moments.   How guarded of a response do you have to make to thugs?

update: Obama slaps sanctions on Libyan government

U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday imposed sanctions on Libya’s government for its violent repression of a popular uprising, signing an executive order blocking property and transactions related to the country.

#Obama signs executive order blocking property and prohibiting transactions related to #Libya

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