"Occupation Corrupts"

Follow up to the previous entry—In the Cauldron of Injustice--

When you listen to Israelis who understand what their government is doing in the Occupied Territories or even to foreign policy experts who have no axe to grind except for peace and a peaceful settlement, you find general agreement on one notion: that the occupation of the territories, the continuation of settlement construction, establishment of outposts, demolition of homes, illegal appropriations of land and water rights, harassment at checkpoints, arrests, kidnappings, torture, detentions without charges, assassinations, artillery shellings, and brutal actions of the Israeli police and the IDF—I list the catalog because all of these things are going on all the time—the point of agreement is that these things are hurting Israel irreparably and working counter to their security.

A recent editorial in Ha'aretz bears this out, and makes the point that antiwar critics in the United States have been making for many years now: that Abu Ghraib was a symptom of the moral corruption that has been driving the leadership of this country in both foreign and domestic policy.

The editorial, entitled “Something bad is happening to us”, details the corruption that was first revealed a few years ago by Breaking the Silence , a group of current and ex-IDF soldiers formed to work for peace and to tell Israeli citizens what brutality has been and is being carried out in their name. Their keynote is "Occupation Corrupts." This past weekend, on Israeli television, a show called Facts broke the silence once again and backed it up with phone camera pictures. Here's a description from the editorial:

This time, it was regular soldiers in the Kfir Brigade. They exposed their backsides and sexual organs to Palestinians, pressed an electric heater to the face of a young boy, beat young boys senseless, recorded everything on their mobile phones and sent it to their friends. One of their "mischievous acts" was to test how long a Palestinian who was being choked could survive without breathing. When he passed out, the experiment was stopped. The soldiers described activities to "break the routine" that consisted entirely of abuse. It was enough for a boy "to look at us the wrong way" for him to be beaten.

The editorial ends with the same point we in the antiwar and progressive movement have been making for years:

Perfectly ordinary people, as the American psychologist said of the Abu Ghraib abusers, are capable of behaving like monsters when they receive a message from the top that it is permissible to abuse, beat, choke, burn, make people miserable and generally do anything that man's evil genius is capable of inventing to others who are under their control. Something bad is happening to us, they are saying in the Kfir Brigade. That "something" is the occupation.

Criticism of one's country is not unpatriotic; it certainly is not treasonous. A Democratic enterprise—or any enterprise for that matter—cannot long survive when it betrays basic principles and refuses to correct its course despite all the signs that it is sailing in the wrong direction.

Some moments in the Cauldron of Injustice

One of the reasons for my not having posted during the last of January and through February was due to my involvement in a conference presenting the Palestinian side of the question. That is, the "other side of the question" that you normally do not read in the mainstream media. It is not reported.


I have been following as best I can, the lack of real progress since the Annapolis peace conference in November--originally out a desire to follow George W. Bush's continuing buffoonery as he brings his disastrous destruction of this country's foreign policy to an end. After seven years of neglect, the man suddenly understands that maybe he should be doing something to wipe a little of the muck from his reputation and that of the Republican Party.


He is utterly incapable of wiping the muck from the Constitution, particularly the sections dealing with the duties of the Executive and the Bill of Rights. But nonetheless he pushed for 6 months to get the Annapolis Conference, the conference was held to much fanfare and hot air, and delegates from the Middle East countries did their damnedest to be optimistic. The optimism faded fast by the close of the first of the bi-weekly meetings that were to be held as a the major elements of the "peace process."


As usual, Israel has refused to show good faith by stopping the building of the settlements, continuing its collective punishment of the residents of Gaza, and its continuing arrest and imprisonment of Palestinians without due process. The Israeli government holds Fatah in the Occupied Territories responsible for stopping the violence coming from the only interested party kept out of the negotiations, Hamas, which threw Fatah out of the Gaza Strip. No control, but a demand for control.


Despite that the so called "Road Map" provides the steps for both sides, despite that the road map clearly calls for a halt to expansion of the settlements, Ehud Olmert has refused to call for a moratorium or end. His latest explanation is so myopically one sided and insensitive to the Palestinians that it would be laughable in its absurdity and irony if it were not so morally bankrupt.


Olmert has been visiting Japan, and in a press conference clearly indicated that he would not halt the settlement construction: I quote from an article in Middle East online from Monday, February 25, 2008:

"First of all it is difficult (to stop construction) because you are talking about living entities," Olmert told broadcaster NHK before his departure for Tokyo. "You are talking about people living there. They need to live, they need to express their desire to live. They have children, they want to get married, they want to have homes."

His insensitivity to the desires of normal Palestinians living under the oppressive occupation of their territory is worthy of George W. Bush. It comes from the same moral corruption that refuses to understand the other side of the question.


I always thought that in a dialogue, "we seek first to understand, then to be understood" as Stephen Covey put it. (I never thought I would be recommending one of the The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People for the Middle East peace process, but there you are.)


After reading Olmert's insensitive and almost peevish statement, it is very clear to me that he is just trying to grind the other side down and frustrate the Palestinians into another violent rebellion. This has become clear to the Arab nations as well. They have become so frustrated with the Israeli government's intractability that they are now discussing withdrawing their 2002 peace initiative--which proposed exactly what Israel has been demanding all along: recognition of their existence as a state and security for their borders.


Olmert will not change. The frustrated and foolishly violent splinters of Palestinians who keep sending rockets over the border does not appear about to change. The Israeli assassinations will not stop, nor will their collective punishment of the Palestinians. Nor will the ambitions of the most radical of the Zionists, whose stated aim is to drive the Palestinians off the land and into the surrounding countries.


And when you see articles in the American press about the children in Sderot, the southern Israeli town, wounded by Kassam rockets, you feel bad. You wish that the Palestinians would have enough intelligence and sense to stop their violence. And then you feel worse when you see that the daughter of a Palestinian family, coming out of a store after buying her mother a present, was hit in the back of the head by a rubber bullet and died three days later without regaining consciousness.


The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), not surprisingly, deny that they used the rubber bullets. They do admit to using tear gas canisters against some young people throwing stones nearby. The Israeli residents of Sderot ask that Ehud Olmert come spend a day or two with them to experience their fear.


And the father of the dead girl is a member of a Palestinian-Israeli group of ex-Palestinian fighters and former soldiers in the IDF. You will see the wounded Israeli children mentioned on the news and in the American and Israeli press, but you will find the story of the dead Palestinian girl only in the Palestinian news services and the International Herald Tribune.


The usual complaint from supporters of Israel when one presents information about the Palestinians' hardships is that the "other side" is not being told. Well, the Palestinian story, here in this country, IS THE OTHER SIDE.


So now you have both sides. Which do you respect more? Ehud Olmert or the Palestinian father? Don't ask me. I have my bias. I am the father of two daughters in a privileged and safe community. Olmert has two daughters and two sons, and his wife is a strong supporter of Peace Now. His older daughter is an outspoken supporter of Machsom Watch, the Israeli woman's group that monitors checkpoints and confronts IDF soldiers about abuses against the Palestinians. That was the story according to Newsday in March of 2006. What they think two years later is an open question. I suspect they haven't changed much.


Demand peace, non-violence, and intelligent negotiations from both sides.

Blogging on the Run

Skimming along quickly this evening after a night at the movies—a disappointing but thrilling Vantage Point (Dennis Quaid, William Hurt, Forest Whitaker) with a fatal plot flaw causing the disappointment. I won't ruin it for you, but it's a character imperfection based on Liberal wish fulfillment.

I love information that comes from the ground view. That's why whenever I see the name Nir Rosen as the author, I always read the piece. His latest, “The Myth of the Surge” is in Rolling Stone. It is a good corrective to the official party line that has been swallowed hook line and tin squid lure that the surge has been working. I recommend it very highly.

As I write the phrase “the official party line” I think to myself that this is what it must have been like for people in the Soviet Union before the first sprinklings of glasnost. Well, a bit of an exaggeration, we are not that far into the forest yet, and so I suppose my real situation is in more in tune with the late I.F. Stone: “All Governments Lie.”


More on that point later when I do some more discussion on Joe Stieglitz, and asymmetrical intelligence.

One of the concerns I have about the Democratic candidates centers around foreign policy. Of the two candidates (did Mike Gravel ever officially drop out of the race?), neither is able to say what they really intend to do. In campaigning, particularity on foreign policy is the death kiss. They fear alienating their supporters or a particular segment of potential voters, or they fear leaving themselves open to an attack of “swiftboating.” We are not going to be educated by the candidates themselves.

We can however, get an education from people like Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. Just listening to him is an education, but if you really want some realistic thinking about the current policy issues, listen to this interview with him on Antiwar Radio. Catch the interview here.


Scott Horton (“the other Scott Horton”) asks some leading questions and then has the sense to sit back and let Clemons talk. He is a valuable mentor, and if you have any interest in the US's place in the world, listen hard to what he says, particularly when he makes the point that the Bush Administration has diminished our place in the eyes of the world, and that we must understand that this has happened. He is particularly good in the second half when asked to comment on the foreign policy advisers that Barack Obama is relying on.

One anecdote stayed with me. Clemons recently visited China and asked one of his Chinese foreign policy people what China was up to. The answer? Something to the effect of “we are thinking up ways of distracting the United States with small Middle Eastern countries.”

Ain't it the truth!

The Cost of Moral Corruption: $3 Trillion,

As we used to say in the insurance business, and that's just the minimum.

I can remember a little over two years ago that Joe Stieglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist, former chief economist for the world bank, and Linda Bilmes, an economist at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard projected the costs of the Iraq war at between $1.2 and $2 trillion dollars in their paper “The Economic Costs of the Iraq War: An Appraisal Three Years After the Beginning of the Conflict.” Just to establish context, this was in response to official government estimates that the cost of the war was going to be about $500 billion dollars. (The paper can be found here.)

What I found most important in their analysis back then was that they had included estimates of costs to take care of returning military casualties from the war, and other costs unrecognized by the usual government or mainstream media commentators. For example: hiring contractors to do work previously considered “soldierly” has increased costs, as have the cost of bonuses to retain trained soldiers who are thinking they could leave the army and become a contractor; or in another area, the loss to society of the full employment and productivity that would have been contributed had a soldier not been wounded and disabled; another was the money paid to oil producing nations for the oil to keep the war vehicles running: money which does not go into the economy of the US.

According to Stieglitz, he and Bilmes even adjusted their estimates downward a bit to account for the “benefits” of the war, such as that we no longer had to patrol the “no-Fly Zone” since Saddam was defanged. (For a good commentary on the paper, here's an excellent interview of Stieglitz by Charles M. Young in Rolling Stone.)

But of course, that was 2006. Two years later, it's not surprising to see that the estimated cost of the war has increased, but the increase appears to me to be disproportionately large. In the latest estimate, Stieglitz and Bilmes project the cost of the war to be $3 trillion dollars.

Their estimates are presented briefly in the Times (London) online in a guest editorial called “The Three Trillion Dollar War”. The piece is a quick view of their new book, of the same title, to be published in March, 2008 in the US. (It comes out this month in England, which accounts for the Times online including the cost of the War in Iraq in terms of the cost to Great Britain.)

What is astounding is that the direct costs of the war—not including the costs of taking care of the injured veterans, for instance, or other items yet to be accounted for, now exceeds the cost of the 12 year Vietnam war by about 30%, is ten times the cost of the first Gulf War, twice that of the First World War and is exceeded only by . . . well, let Stieglitz and Bilmes tell you in their own words :

The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion (that's $5 million million, or £2.5 million million). With virtually the entire armed forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the cost per troop (in today's dollars) was less than $100,000 in 2007 dollars. By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of $400,000 per troop.

But remember, this is only the DIRECT cost of the war: the equipment, the ammo, the fuel, the bombs, the planes, the payment of salaries to the soldiers. The information that the Pentagon does not account for, the information that we can estimate by taking into account the overall impact of the war and our commitments to our soldiers—disability payments for the rest of their lives and the cost of medical care, for instance, or the cost of borrowing money to finance the war, to finance those disability payments, is tremendous.


You get the picture.

(Always keep in mind that The Bush administration--unlike FDR, and just like LBJ--has refused to raise taxes on those who could afford it (and the majority of whom probably strongly supported the war).


The information that is not entirely revealed, is not made transparent to us, must be ferreted out and highlighted by Stieglitz and Bilmes. Thank them for detailing the lack of transparency in our government on this criminal war.

The saddening thought is what Stieglitz and Bilmes say at the very end of their update:

A $3 trillion figure for the total cost strikes us as judicious, and probably errs on the low side. Needless to say, this number represents the cost only to the United States. It does not reflect the enormous cost to the rest of the world, or to Iraq.

Of course. Our government omits and forgets and disregards much. The candidates for President forget to talk about it—or they consciously avoid talking about it.


Only Dennis Kucinich, the conscience of the Democratic Presidential race, mentioned it when he had his limited chances to speak. Only Dennis Kucinich, for instance, mentioned that we have an obligation to pay war reparations to the people of the country we illegally invaded.

And how do you begin to calculate these reparations we owe in the greatest moral sense but will never ever get around even to calculating? What has been the cost to the Iraqi people? What will be the cost?

Here's one of them. Back in September Bill Moyers interviewed George Packer and Debra Amos, and Packer talked of the plight of Iraqi immigrant families:

When you talk to Iraqis now compared to at the beginning of the war they no longer say in six months things will get better as they used to or in a year things will get better. They now say in two decades. In other words, for an Iraqi, not really in my lifetime. It will be my children that see a better Iraq. That means they're making decisions now about what they have to do with their families in order to ride out a 20 year horror. And that means they're not going back to Iraq.

No, left out of the cost, as Stieglitz and Bilmes write, is the cost to the families of the dead Iraqis, the cost of the destroyed infrastructure, the cost of corruption and murder, the uncountable costs to the over Four Million refugees and internal refugees. It brings tears to my eyes to think of the injustice we are responsible for. There is no end to it. The accounting is obscured at the same time that it is open ended.

More to come . . .

Report from Afghanistan

Sarah Chayes—former Monitor Radio, Paris-based freelance reporter, and NPR reporter, whose work was always admirably hard-nosed and of high quality—stopped reporting in 2002 and returned to Afghanistan to at the invitation of the uncle of Hamid Karzai, and worked in Afghans for Civil Society, a non-profit group founded by Karzai's brother. She left that post after less than a year but has stayed, at great danger to herself, to help form a cooperative--the Arghand Cooperative--that produces fruit, nut and botanical skin care products. She is a brave woman. Only Bill Moyers would even think of having her on to get the story about her work in Afghanistan. The interview presents unique viewpoint on the conflict in Afghanistan and most importantly suggests why the efforts of the United States and NATO are going badly.

It is not the story you get from the mainstream media. Her reporter's eyes are still sharp and her analysis of the situation on the ground will help educate the American public.

Catch it here and watch it a couple of times if you can. Here's the final moment, the question asked by a Bill Moyers who is almost embarrassed to ask it, admiring her dedication and fearing for her survival:

BILL MOYERS: There's a thin line. As I listen to you, there's a thin line we sometimes walk, we human beings, between hope and folly. . . Are you very close to that line?

SARAH CHAYES: I don't think that hope is relevant. I think determination is all that counts. You just have to try. It doesn't matter if you hope you're going succeed or not. You have to keep trying.

She is a brave woman. After you see her speak out passionately about her life and her work and criticize the situation on the ground, you have to wish her well and, like Moyers, have the hope that she will survive.

What hath unregulated Corporate Socialism wrought?

Writing in The Nation online, Nancy Cleeland in “The Incredible Shrinking Paycheck” reports on the analysis of recent Bureau of Labor Statistics information. The analysis, by Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, indicates that the “grim news” was worse than he expected.

I just thought it might be helpful to pass on to you this revealing chart:

Bernstein sees three forces contributing to the decline in wages: wage growth has slowed for American non-managers, about 80% of the workforce; inflation is picking up, spurred by higher gas prices and a rise in food prices; and last, employers are cutting back on hours as the economy shrinks. Since the economy is continuing to slump and prices continue to rise, the trend will continue, and as our paychecks purchase less, we will cut back on spending. Rough weather ahead . . .

Except of course, for the managers and the entrepreneurs in the financial sector and elsewhere. Remember that the top ten percent of the population owns an enormous share of the country's entire wealth to begin with. This includes the people who put together the unregulated, unsupervised, irresponsible—in some cases probably criminal—hornswoggle of sub-prime mortgages, later sold off by the mortgage lenders to financiers, who in turn sliced and diced and rebundled them into what are now seen to be almost worthless securities.

As a result, the banks who bought the subprime-based securities are in trouble, having to write off the losses on their balance sheets. The big guys, like Citicorp and Mellon/Bank of New York, and others not only here in the states but all over the globe. And governments are bailing them out. Here in the US the banks have hit the Federal Reserve for $50 billion in new money to support their balance sheets.

What else is new? We paid for the Savings and Loan crisis. And despite his outspoken criticism of the economy and the political scene right now, Lee Iacocca insisted that the government had to bail out Chrysler a few decades ago.

Of course, the financiers and brokers have already scooped up their bonuses and commissions. They have put their money into foreign currencies, gold, or cash have no responsibility imposed upon them. Now they are waiting for "buying opportunities" in the market, including the foreclosed properties in the neighborhood across town or out in San Bernardino.

No one of them is guiltless, and I am sure that there are Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians who have made their money off the scam. Not to mention some closet anarchists. But the subprime securities crisis has eroded the dollar. The wartime economy has borrowed its way into war. The “Haves and the Have-mores”--the president's favorite people--have made out like bandits. And most of us are shuddering when we fill up the gas tank.

Perhaps it will make us walk more or ride a bike. But as you do watch out for backwash of the Cadillac and Hummer SUVs. That's the first sign of the rough weather ahead. It will tousle your hair and jostle your determination.

Why does Bill Moyers get a bad rap?

I don't know why people think that Bill Moyers is not to be listened to. The other day I ran across a comment on a news site and the writer dismissed out of hand that Moyers had been used as a source. You knew that the commentator on the news story had not even gone to the Moyers reference to check it out.


For the past two weeks, Bill Moyers has been having as his guest Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a media analyst, very bright and perceptive, commenting on the elections and the absolutely god-awful bullshit coverage on the TV. My god I am so tired of it. The talking heads are absolutely incapable of discussing the issues or even asking the questions that would focus on the issues.


Tonight Jamieson gave her comments on the Iowa and NH votes. Also, Moyers interviewed Shelby Steele, a conservative (!) essayist and scholar at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, commenting on Obama. Steele has just published a book on Obama called A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama And Why He Can't Win. Steele wrote a book called The Content of Our Character which I read a number of years ago with real appreciation. A really interesting interview.


Both the commentary by Jamieson and the interview with Steele can be found here. If you come to this post late, search Moyers' site for the references to the program.


You might enjoy it if for nothing else than the pleasant change of pace from the crap shoot on NBC, Fox, CBS, CNN. (Only C Span will give you some interesting actual coverage of the issues as the candidates discuss them. The rest of the idiots are more interested in sound bytes and stupidity. I have a fantasy of calling up and getting on Hardball and telling Mathews to shut the hell up and start doing some real journalism.)


You have to grant me this: listening to Moyers talk about the issues and the quality of the reporting is a hell of a lot more interesting than watching somebody like Wolf Blitzer or even the mainstream tools at Washington Week that follows the Moyers show out here in PST zone. (Washington Week which is now sponsored by National Journal and the National Mining Association. Sheeesh. Or as Archie Bunker used to sneer, Jeez, Editht!

A Specter is Haunting America!

A relative of mine has had the misfortune of receiving emails sent by the very conservative parent of a friend. From time to time my relative forwards one to me. I couldn't let this one go by, however, without trying to parse it and perhaps try to understand the conservative man's thought processes.

So here is the text of the email my relative forwarded to me:

Subject: A German's Point of View on Islam

Let us neither become the silent majority, nor the victims of the evil
being propagated in this World!

Very sobering message!

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned
a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German
people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward
fanaticism.

"Very few people were true Nazis "he said," but many enjoyed the
return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those
who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just
sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we
had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost
everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my
factories."

We are told again and again by "experts" and "talking heads" that
Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want
to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is
entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel
better, meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across
the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam
at this moment in history.

It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of
50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically
slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking
over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb,
behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque
after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and
hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the
"peaceful majority", the "silent majority", is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in
peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about
20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge
population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to
kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a
warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of
12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and
bayonet. And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it
not be said that the majority of Rwandans were "peace loving"?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our
powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of
points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up ,
because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that
the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs,
Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and
many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until
it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to
the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts that the issue is
serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is
contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend
yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world
wide, read this - think about it - and send it on.

I thought this was an excellent example of paranoia--and very sincere paranoia at that. As I read it again, I began trying to think of ways I could rebut this attempt to start a chain letter of propagation of the paranoia. I actually thought of sending the message back to the man who had sent it to my relative, but I knew that a response would be worth very little. It could not possibly inspire a dialogue. At best, a response would be read and then tossed aside as the rant of an unpatriotic fool.

However, it seems to me to be a good start at examining the thinking of the fierce foes of Islamofascism. It also forced me to write down what I thought might be the good alternatives to the strategy we have taken since September 11, 2001, the day that the specter began to haunt the more conservative and impercipient citizens of the United States.

Dear Mr. _____________:

E________ forwarded your email to me and some others of her friends, and I am presuming to respond to it rather than forward it. I find the anecdote of the German survivor quite important, though I am not sure that it is the same kind of importance that the author of the message has in mind. The anecdote tells me that I have a duty--as the German industrialist obviously did not think he had--to speak out against what was happening to his country.

I think in fact, that the message you sent to E__________ is counter-productive, and in fact is the very kind of thinking that was rife in Nazi Germany during the 1930s. Perhaps the good German industrialist, had he the chance to relive those moments, might have spoken out in protest and attempted to keep himself and his friends from just "sitting back and letting it happen."

Did you notice that title of your email is somewhat deceptive? The German industrialist did not even mention Islam. In other words, whoever sent you the message has forced the anecdote to fit the notion of "Islamofascism" so currently fashionable in conservative circles. Or perhaps the writer of the original has fallen victim to the winter strain of what I like to call the Giuliani virus?

The whole message omits, unfortunately, a very important element of reasoned discourse. That is, we all have have a duty to provide evidence for our assertions, and secondly, we cannot suppress ideas that counter our argument, especially if we acknowledge them.

I will take the second point first, and refer to the assumption the writer of the message makes:

"Although this unqualified assertion [that "the majority of Muslims want to live in peace"] may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history."

However, if the unqualified assertion that most Muslims want peace may be true, surely that IS relevant. Perhaps we have here an inconvenient truth? And despite his common sense view that such might be the case, he suppresses the idea by calling it fluff, and replaces it with what, I think is an apt but unconsciously damaging metaphor. He chooses to believe not in reasonable persons desiring peace but in the "specter" of "fanatics rampaging across the globe." Unfortunately, the word "specter" carries too much unreality as well, with connotations of apparitions and ghosts.

I think that is the root of the problem I have with this message. The thought might appear to be a specter, but appearances are not reality.

However, for the sake of the argument, let's delineate the specter that arises by deliberately suppressing the inconvenient truth. How about some evidence that shows how the "fanatics" rule Islam? That is to say, where is the proof that "the Fanatics" are actually in charge of the major Islamic countries of the world (we can begin with Indonesia, we can follow with Egypt, or Turkey, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia. However, those last are our allies!) Perhaps he means that all powerful country called Sudan? Perhaps not. We have agreements with the government of Sudan to assist us with the “War on Terror.” We might even have sent captives there for . . . rendition. (We can leave aside the Palestinians and Hezbollah for the moment, since they are quite weak compared to the United States, and we can also omit Libya since we started trading with it again.)

So perhaps without having the courage to name them, he really means Iran and Syria? Can he then perhaps show how these two countries are run by fanatics like Hitler? And can he present evidence that has been substantially supplied by neutral third party sources rather than the United States government--or more specifically the office of the Vice President and the Weekly Standard? And once he has established that can he show how Iran and Syria are also secretly massing aircraft carriers, planes, tanks,and ships for an invasion of the major countries of the western world?

This material armament does not even consider the troops they would need. For example, we know now that the rudely replaced General of the Army Eric Shinseki was probably correct that at least 300,000 troops would be needed to secure a country the size of Iraq. So the Iranians--who are pretty good soldiers themselves--would need at least 3.6 million troops to secure a country the size of the United States. (And when you think of the insurgency that would result from all of our well-armed citizenry, they'd probably want twice that number at least.) That's a lot of troops to hide in the Canadian wilds. Perhaps the Iranians are signing secret non-aggression pacts with Mexico and Canada so they can stage the invasion. But you might object, they will deliver the bombs with their missiles. Perhaps the ones that can barely reach Israel will some how grow booster rockets and make it over the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to strike Baltimore.

You see, I am taking the analogy the message is insisting on seriously. But I cannot see how the industrial capacity in Iran and Syria is very similar to the military buildup that took place in Germany during the 1930s after the National Socialists were defeated but Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Without a Wehrmacht and a Luftwaffe, I think it might be difficult to rampage over the globe.

I think you will find yourself hard pressed to find the evidence. I think what is driving this message is a fearsome fantasy, not common sense. The reasonable and well-substantiated idea that most Muslims want peace, since at the present moment they are the ones who appear to be the victims of terror, gets lost in the aura of an apparition grounded in fear.

Some mitigation is needed. All the fanaticism alluded to in the message is local, and is mostly internally contained. The fanaticism of the Nazis, the Stalinists, the Japanese Imperialists, and the Maoists is long gone. The so-called Cold War is over. The local fanaticism the writer fears is hardly equal to any of those mid-century powers either in extent or in philosophical influence. Those mid-century wars are done, and current efforts to create new Hitlers, Stalins, or Tojos who speak Arabic or Farsi and believe in a government founded on a single religious belief are flimsy at best and not very useful.

Indeed, I find that a few proponents of the word "Islamofascism" also have a worrisome tendency to insist that the United States is really a Christian nation and that Christian principles should control governmental approaches to problems. In fact, I find that those religio-political zealots have something in common with the leaders they accuse of "Islamo fascism." So much so in fact that I am tempted to be glib and talk about "Christofascism" as if it were as real.

Of course, the absurdity of the latter term underscores the absurdity of the former. Neither begins to approach the real problem. The person who wrote the message probably does believe that terrorists are actually taking control of the Islamic countries, but when you stop to think about it, the evidence is not there.

We should keep in mind that the country with the largest offensive war machine, and a military budget larger than almost the rest of the world combined is the United States. We should also keep in mind that the expenditures for Iraq and Afghanistan are "off budget." So that means we have the greatest military expenditures in the history of the modern world.

You might remind yourself that George W. Bush announced the term "Axis of Evil" just a few months after the Iranians sent overtures of negotiation (or didn't the National Review tell us about that?) In fact, as has been well-documented, the Iranian government both before and after the election of their current president, had cooperated with the United States against terrorists and the Taliban in Afghanistan.Looked at objectively, I am afraid that much of the world with some justification perceives the United States as that "specter rampaging across the globe."

You also may not know it, but our soldiers are currently being encouraged and browbeaten into believing that they are soldiers for Christ rather than soldiers of the United States. In fact, one could reasonably argue that the continuing and so-called "unpatriotic" resistance to the ongoing sectarian tendencies within the military is an attempt--unlike the cowardly German capitalist/industrialist—to deter the Christian militarism.

Lest you think I am exaggerating, I refer you to the lawsuit brought in Federal courts this past year by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. A believer in Islamo Fascism would call criticism of the "war on Terror" unpatriotic. It is not. It is part of the movement to deter the destruction from within of the Constitution of the United States.

As Ron Paul, the most ignored (and the only anti-war) Republican candidate has said on more than one occasion, quoting Sinclair Lewis, when fascism comes to the United States, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. In fact, I can argue that at least the German industrialist in the anecdote was aware of what was going on. Hitler after all, had been elected to office in a democratic and constitutional process.

I can argue that most people in the United States are not even aware of what is going on. Most people in the US exist in a bubble of self-contained amnesia about injustice, domestic spying, executive abuse, disregard for treaties (which the Constitution refers to as part of the "supreme law of the land"), the destruction of Habeas Corpus and other high crimes and misdemeanors.

The last creature to discover water is the fish, as a philosopher once said..

That terrorism is a problem, there is no doubt. That there are terrorists worldwide, there is no doubt. That they can plan and commit acts of terrorism is certain. That they have the actual power to take over the nations of the developed world is a fantasy. In fact, it is an utterly bizarre fantasy. Terrorism has become a larger problem because of the phantasmagorical "War on Terror." Our neo-colonial efforts to control the oil resources of other countries is also beyond doubt a contributing cause.

The real shame is that good old fashioned police work; international cooperation; intelligent security programs not distorted and gutted by corporate cynicism, stupidity, and lack of patriotism; rational nuclear disarmament efforts; and some genuinely intelligent and objective domestic, immigration, trade, human rights and foreign policy might have had some real impact on the terrorist problem. Unfortunately, over 7 years have been badly wasted, counter productive, and damaging to our country and to world peace.

If I might close the loop of the analogy in this message that I will not forward, the Nazis, you may recall, made similar and successful efforts to create terrorist enemies: back then the Nazis called their terrorists Communists, socialists, labor organizers, intellectuals, vermin, gypsies, Jews, and homosexuals. We don't need that kind of thinking anymore. We need to think about the problem of terrorism and handle it as a rational citizen of the modern world, not like it's a crusade, or a holy war, or a season of "24," or a John Wayne shoot 'em up. So in the interests of trying to play the German citizen who did protest what was going on, I am returning the message to you and hope you will consider the problem a bit differently.

Sincerely yours,

Afghanistan, Afghanistan: Go fly a Kite

Reading the print edition of the Los Angeles Times for December 22, I found a good illustration of how an ordinary article in a generally well-respected paper tends to spin for the administration. The headline in the Times is “No force 'surge' for Afghanistan.” (Section A, page 3). However, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates did not even use the term “surge” in his press conference:

“You're talking about probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,500 troops . . . So it's not like moving 100,000 troops from one place to the other or something like that.”

Note the deceptive analogy put forth by Secretary Gates by speaking of 100,000 troops. Since that number would almost quadruple the force (given by the Times as 26,000) already in Afghanistan, the comparison was hardly apt, being well beyond an exaggeration. Surge indeed. More like a tsunami at that number. But notice how even in its headline, the Times couldn't do the math correctly to back up its choice of words.

If the total US forces in Afghanistan are at 26,000 as the LATimes reports, an additional 7,500 would certainly qualify to be called a “surge.” That is a 28.8% increase. For comparison, in the so-called “surge” in Iraq, a total of (eventually) 30,000+ troops were added to an existing force of 128,000 which were on the ground early in 2007. The “surge” in Iraq therefore was a percentage increase of roughly 23%. So the question for the Times's staff headline writers and their editors is why present a headline that will seriously misrepresent the increase requested by the Afghanistan commanders? If 23.4% in Iraq qualifies as a "surge," why doesn't 28.8% in Afghanistan?

In other words, the Times tells its readers, we're not going to have to increase our commitment that much. Don't get worried. The increase is minuscule. Certainly not like the surge in Iraq.

But in fact, is this the case? Do we even know how many American troops are fighting in Afghanistan? What is the source for the Times's figure of 26,000? They never tell us where they got the figure, even though Pentagon policy tends to keep the exact number obscured.

What, for example, did Gates and his companion at the press conference, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James Cartwright, actually say about total troop size in Afghanistan? I excerpt from the text of the press conference itself. This comes from Gates and the General toward the end when speaking of the request from the commander for more troops:

But the bottom line is, you're -- if you have satisfied every requirement he has, you're talking about probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,500 troops. So it's not like moving 100,000 troops from one place to the other or something like that.

And we will be looking at the requirements ourselves, and we will be talking with our allies. But there is clearly, in the view even of the commander on the -- in the field, no requirement for a substantial plus-up of forces in Afghanistan to meet -- to accomplish his mission.

(To the general.) Do you want to add anything --

GEN. CARTWRIGHT: No, I think that's right. It's -- one, it's playing to the strength of your allies, and two, the delta -- we started the year at about 35,000. We're ending the year about 43(,000). And we're trying to make sure that what it is we're doing out there is aligned with the need. To the extent that it is -- that there are needs, it is -- it's about in the 7,500 -- but it's spread across combat-type forces, trainers, et cetera. And so we're trying to make sure we understand that and then target our allies for those capabilities which play to their strengths.

Since the context of the press conference included the trip to Scotland to meet with NATO allies, probably Cartwright was referring to total NATO forces, which were at 41,000 as of July.

However, if Cartwright is referring to the combined NATO forces, he's indicated an increase has already taken place. His statement does not jibe with the recent (less than two weeks old) information from Afghanistan. On December 10, 2007 Gwen Ifill interviewed General Dan McNeill, the International Force Commander, on the Online News Hour. He answered her question about the anticipated needs of the International Force in Afghanistan. Are more NATO forces need? Are more Afghan security forces needed?

I think it means both. By U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, we should have security forces that total well over 400,000. That's not going to happen. The present plan in the international community is to build the Afghan army to a force between 70,000 and 80,000. The police, I believe, the figure is 82,000. NATO right now is running about 41,000.

McNeill says "right now" but that 41,00 figure in turn appears to repeat information as of July, as reported by Pierre Tristram on About.com: Middle East Issues. And that in turn appears to have been based on a Congressional Research Service report from March, 2007. So either McNeill was using those July figures, or perhaps Cartwright knows something McNeill doesn't? It is difficult to get an exact count of United States deployments to Afghanistan, because, according to both Tristram and the CRS, the Department of Defense does not report troop strength.

Note what the remarks were in the press conference from Secretary Gates:

But there is clearly, in the view even of the commander on the -- in the field, no requirement for a substantial plus-up of forces in Afghanistan to meet -- to accomplish his mission.

While McNeill knows that the troops suggested in the insurgency manual are "not going to happen," he clearly needs more troops and clearly has put in a request for the 7,500, but Gates is playing with words here--in terms of what is in place, whether 26,000, 41,000 or 43,000--when he says "no requirement for a substantial plus-up in Afghanistan." Clearly more troops are needed by the ground commander, and 7,500 is substantial. It's just not substantial in terms of that dream number McNeill cited of "well over 400,000" or substantial in terms of Gates's 100,000.

The war in Afghanistan isn't going well. Karzai has asked for more help. Some of the NATO countries are clearly getting uncomfortable with the losing battle and are resisting the US's requests for additional support. According to Gates, the Dutch have re-upped for another two years and other countries are going to keep contributing. Poppy production is at an all-time high. But casualties are increasing. This year, suicide bombings have increased to 130. Civilian casualties, at 2600, are double those of last year. As of today, according to iCasualties.org, 115 U.S. and 114 coalition soldiers have been killed this year .

Two other items in the press conference should be pointed out. First, Gates reminded the reporters that that at least least 5,700 troops will be coming home by the end of the year. The White House itself in its Presidential press release for November 29, 2007 has tried to pass this off as a result of the surge (“5,700: Guided by the principle of 'return on success,' the United States will bring 5,700 troops home by the end of the year as a result of progress made by the surge of operations.”). I think it was Juan Cole who pointed out earlier in the year that these troops were scheduled to be withdrawn in December anyway. Any arguments that the troops would be coming home from Iraq because of the "surge" is highly suspect as spin.

Second, one of reporters--referred to as "Jim" by the Secretary of Defense--actually tries to provoke Gates to give an answer:

Mr. Secretary, the highly respected retired Army General Barry McCaffrey just returned to the U.S. from an extensive tour in Iraq and he was there about the same time you were. And he said that what was striking to him is once you get outside the Green Zone, the national government, in a practical sense, for the people of Iraq just doesn't exist. And he said in fact, the U.S. military on the ground serves that purpose, in assuring that the local populations get the kind of basic services that they need, which are actually required for long-term stability.


And he warns that if you take the military out, all that goes away.


Since the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq is conditional, would that be an absolute condition, that there has to be political reconciliation, political progress made by the national government before substantial numbers of American troops can be withdrawn from Iraq? And what kind of assurances did you get in your meeting with Maliki that he was willing to make progress on those issues?

It's a shame the reporter had to obfuscate his provocative reference to McCaffrey with his questions about "absolute conditions" and "assurances from Maliki." Why not just ask what Gates's response was to McCaffrey's observation? The elaborations just allowed Gates to temporize and blather. Although Gates completely --and predictably--avoided addressing the "highly respected" McCaffrey, he in effect supported McCaffrey's contention:

And creating -- getting the ministries down into the provincial and local areas, you know, frankly -- I mean, this is a challenge we face in Afghanistan, as well. It's a challenge that many developing countries face.

Gates passed the buck. Everything will have to depend on the judgment of Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus "next spring." You may remember that last spring we were told to wait for General Petraeus to report in September. In the spring of 2008 I am sure, we will postpone the decision until the end of summer. And watch how that September 2008 answer will do everything possible to frame success in time for the Presidential elections in November. And so it goes.


(As an aside, I also find it unfortunate that Gates, in talking at the beginning of the conference about his visits to wounded troops and their families, described them as “close encounters.” Unfortunate, I think, because the phrase, in our contemporary movie culture, connotes that the injured troops and their families are aliens. The secretary should not use the phrase again, and I hope that he or his his staff will avoid the inept phrase in the future.)

Do Your Kids Have $175,000 Just Laying Around?

I wish I were as eloquent as Scott Horton, who produced an excellent piece on his “No Comment” blog yesterday regarding the fiscal malaise—or catastrophe perhaps is not too strong a word to use—that our country is in with regard to its fiscal situation. The piece is entitled “Obligations Ignored.” I urge you all to read it and ponder it through the Holidays and then when you start working to pay off your holiday expenditures.

At the beginning of the piece Horton draws heavily on an article about the Comptroller General of the United States, David Walker, and a speech he made at the National Press Club. Horton includes a link to the article as well, though he presents it almost in its entirety. Two quotes from the Comptroller struck me. First of all,

“If the federal government was a private corporation and the same report came out this morning, our stock would be dropping and there would be talk about whether the company’s management and directors needed a major shake-up.”

And then,

“The federal government’s fiscal exposures totaled approximately $53 trillion as of September 30, 2007, up more than $2 trillion from September 30, 2006, and an increase of more than $32 trillion from about $20 trillion as of September 30, 2000,” Walker said. “This translates into a current burden of about $175,000 per American or approximately $455,000 per American household.”

If I have any criticism, it's that Horton does not point out the obvious about the pattern of keeping the Government Accounting office from expressing a qualified opinion: the pattern started, according to the article, eleven years ago, meaning that it includes the last term of the Clinton Administration. Although everyone agrees that Clinton succeeded in decreasing the deficits and lowering the overall debt, it is disheartening to find the pattern of less transparency starting there.

Horton is not the first to point out the terrible shape of the fiscal legacy we are leaving our children and grand children, but he is the most eloquent I have read so far. Especially damning, I think, are his comments on the failure of the press to write about the matter. You would think that a speech to the National Press Club would produce headlines news.

I think Horton is spot on, and I welcome your responses to this.

Another Take on the Success of the Surge

It warms the cockles, it does, when I read an alternate evaluation of the situation that smacks more of truth and intelligence than sheer belief and “please let it be so” that you read in the papers or hear on television news casts. When the evaluation comes from an ex-military officer with experience in Iraq, I pay a lot of attention.

You can see for yourself whether the recent interminable stories of the “success of the surge” in Iraq hold water after reading Douglas Macgregor's piece in Mother Jones, “Will Iraq's Great Awakening Lead to a Nightmare?” Macgregor's piece has the ring of truth about it precisely because he accepts the facts that the Bush Administration is gloating about. He just interprets them in a way that makes common sense, rather than the self-congratulatory enthusiasm rapidly coagulating into smug truculence.

You can't argue with people who are doctrinal acolytes, but see if you think this makes some sense:

We don't know much about developments within Iraq. Military officers who have recently served in Iraq tell me they don't truly understand Iraq's complexity or the duplicitous nature of the Iraqis they work with. In my conversations with them, they raise troubling questions that don't lend themselves to sound-bite answers on talk radio or the evening news. Is the Great Awakening inside the Sunni Arab community the road to Iraq's stability, or is it just a pause for Sunni rearmament and reorganization?

Or this:

all we can say with certainty is that unrelenting Arab hatred of the U.S. military presence in Iraq and the nature of the Sunni-Shiite struggle will make it unlikely that the cash-for-cooperation strategy will buy Iraq genuine stability, let alone the legitimate political order that is needed.

And finally, for me, at least, a most fitting conclusion for the benefit of the less and less impressive leading Democratic candidates:

if the next administration fails to disengage its forces from Iraq and renews the determination to hold on to the country, if it does not renounce the myth that America's mission in the world is to impose American concepts of political order on foreign peoples burdened with undeveloped economies and dysfunctional societies, all bets are off.

I have left out some interesting remarks on the regional players—what he says about Turkey alone should make great sense to anyone with an open mind. Visit the article and read it. Keep it with you for lunch time reading.

Mother Jones has done some fine things on the war over the past four years. One project that is invaluable is their great reference time line on the war—which is great to consult when trying to research the facts on the ground—when did Bremer come aboard, when did he leave, or when were the two elections held, when was Sergio DiMello killed, for instance—but also other great articles drawing on a wide range of input, such as this article in October 2007 “U.S. Out How? The Moral Dilemma of Leaving Iraq” which gives the results of interviews “with more than 50 experts, from General Petraeus' advisers to antiwar activists.” It's worthwhile reading, and then you can really start to make up your own mind.

My mind was made up long before the war started. I didn't think we should invade, and yet I could see the great folly--as Barbara Tuchman would call it in The Guns of August--as the troops were massing on the borders, the ships steaming to the Persian Gulf, the Turks pissing off Donald Rumsfeld as they refused to let us use their airbases to stage the invasion from the north, and then you just knew that the movement would never stop. The dogs of war were straining at the leash, and you don't say "down boy" and tell Saddam Hussein he had one last chance. There's moments like that in everyone's life, so why shouldn't there be in a nation's? It's that moment in love when you just know that it's going to happen, and you nuzzle into that warm neck; and I am sure for a killer, it's that moment when he knows he is going to pull the trigger.

The great international crime, as we Americans established in the Geneva Conventions, in the United Nations, and at the Nuremberg trials, is the war of aggression. No facts or arguments will change that for me. We did wrong and we refuse to admit it, convincing ourselves that if we just fight a bit harder, a bit smarter, throw some more money at the problem, WE CAN WIN THIS WAR.

I can't wait for the Bushit to be flushed down the toilet of history on January 20, 2009. I just can't wait.

A Turning from the workshop Floor

We all have friends who send emails to us with humorous pictures, novelties, jokes, emails they get which strike them as profound. I always check the attempts at profundity at Snopes.com, the urban legend folks, who invariably have tracked down the source of the urban legend or have corrected the errors.


It makes me feel good to know my shit detector is still working, but it can also lead to strange moments, like the email forwarding the story about the little girl dying of cancer, supposedly written by a doctor. It was forwarded to me by a friend who has cancer. I checked it out on Snopes and found out that it was a fabrication. I sent the link to my friend with a few misgivings, but figured that truth was more valuable than false hopes.


I got one the other day from a friend that was a rant about taxes, and was based on a calculation of what "a billion" can represent. The one designed to strike every Christian's fancy was "a billion minutes ago, Jesus was alive." Sure enough, when I googled the sentence, the first entry was for Snopes.com. (Since Google presents the search in the order of the most hits, I figure that a number of people have their poop detectors working at least as well as mine.)


So in the interest of still presenting the sense of what a billion represents, I cut out the extraneous rant and updated the calculations. The email referred to an ad agency who had come up with the original calculations, but the folks at Snopes were unable to identify the source. From the calculations in the forwarded email regarding a billion seconds ago being 1959 I figure the original was done around 1990, but that's the limit of my investigation. (Life is short enough for this little exercise. This is, after all, a mere turning on the shop floor.)


I have updated the math relative to December 2007:

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but here are some rough calculations to make the point about the large number called a "billion."

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1975 .
B. A billion minutes ago Jesus had been dead for about 70 years .
C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age. (114,077 years ago = the Pleistocene epoch)
D. A billion days ago (2,737,852 years ago) Australopithecus, the first hominid, appeared on the African savannas, brain size 1/3 that of a modern human.
E. A thousand billion is a trillion.
G. The public debt of the US is $9.1 trillion.*
H. Interest alone increases the public debt by $1.11 billion a day.**

*As of October 2007 **Based on $406 billion in 2006.

I guess I will leave it up to you to contemplate the meaning of $9.1 trillion dollars of US debt. It's a number that makes me want to shrug or go for a walk. I haven't decided yet which is the better thing to do.

Hat tip (h/t) to The Motley Fool's bulletin board for the calculation ("Based on 60 seconds a minute, 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day and 365.25 days a . . . year"). And to Janet A., my friend who sent the original email.

Internet Freedom

A few of you may know about these issues, but for those who don't or want to learn more, I post this essay by Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, complete with links to supporting documentation. Please read it.

I think it is one of the most important issues for our Democracy, and although it is presented from a liberal's point of view, the same threat is perceived by Conservative, Libertarian, and Conservative writers and speakers all over the Country--including a few Republicans.

The Internet is what places our enormous society squarely into the varied and free press situation that existed at the beginning of our country. To allow monopolies to dominate the Internet and begin a fee-based imposition will hamper your ability to express yourself, to communicate freely with friends and organization, your ability to advertise your business interests, and, perhaps worst of all, will stifle electronic innovation.

This is a serious issue, and your taking the time to send messages to your Congress critters will help them resist monopoly media's concerted lobbying pressures.

Fight the Good fight.

Save the Internet, Preserve Internet Liberty

We all know the drawbacks of corporate news outlets, and the great blessing that the internet represents for grassroots organizing and information sharing. But of course, the big corporations are very unhappy about losing some control of these matters, and have been pushing for legislation to end internet liberty and make it into the Corporate Monopoly Internet (CMI), cutting out individuals and small groups.

Some may think the word "monopoly" an exaggeration. But all private television news broadcasts are owned by only five corporations in the United States. Five is too little for healthy competition, and all five disallow centrist and progressive points of view as most Americans would define them (i.e. the range of acceptable opinion on the US airwaves is from center-right to far right). Opinion polling decisively shows that the American public is very substantially to the left of virtually all television broadcasts with a social or political content. Yet of the three cable news networks, 2 are center-right and 1 is far right!

Those who argue that the Five Sisters' monopoly is not so bad, given that they don't control a lot of the major newspapers or wire services are ignoring a simple fact. Most Americans get their news from television, and newspapers' readership is rapidly falling. The monopoly is real, and it explains everything about why BushRove were able to propagandize us into the Iraq War. Likewise, the Five Sisters' Monopoly benefits the Republican Party, since the central concerns of key Democratic Party constituencies such as organized labor (an unorganized labor), urban community groups, African Americans, and Asians and Latinos, feminists, etc. are given little exposure on the airwaves. When's the last time you saw a factory worker presented in a positive light on corporate television? Why did CNN front load the Republican debate with the immigration issue, which polls show is not at the forefront of American concerns the way the Iraq War is?

This extreme bias is one reason Ed Markey is right to make Internet Liberty an element in the 08 political campaign.The narrowing of the range of public views in the media is a direct result of the Five Sisters' Monopoly.So how could they Corporatize the internet and exclude our voices? They could set it up so that, for instance, if you couldn't come up with $100,000 a year, they could arrange for it to take 5 minutes for your web site to load, while Corporate Monopoly web sites loaded immediately. (Studies show that readers are unwilling to wait more than a few seconds for sites to load, after which they move on.) That move would not only destroy the blogosphere, but it would get rid of YouTube and similar video-posting sites, as well.

Or, they might decline to carry the bigger video files by p2p (as with Comcast, which actually lied to its subscribers that the download was unavailable with a spoofed email purporting to come from the poster!). Comcast is the same corporation that shoves Fox Cable News down our throats but won't let us see the direct BBC feed as part of our basic package, much less Aljazeera English.

Not only are there too few companies providing broadcast news, but there are too few cable and satellite corporations. Comcast is even angry at an FCC ruling that limits them to providing cable services to only 1/3 of the US! They do sweetheart deals with Time Warner and Disney, which ensure we have to have things like the Gardening Channel, using up space that could have been used for real news.

Save the Internet is a key site for organizing to stop the imposition of a Corporate Monopoly on the Internet.Join the campaign to make sure Congress knows how we feel, and send them a message here.We may well live in a little bubble of Internet Liberty (what some call 'net neutrality,' but that is a term I find too cold and technical to describe what I value in our current internet freedoms).