CommonPrejudice

A Book On My Reading List

Deer Hunting With Jesus:

...Imagine a cross between Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas?, Hunter S. Thompson's booze-and-dope fueled meditations on Nixon's political potency, and C. Wright Mills' understanding of the durability of the power elite... put 'em all into the hopper, mix them around at high speed, and you end up somewhere about where Bageant did. In other words, it's informative, infuriating, terrifying, scintillating, and, at the end of the day, when HST's ghost finally emerges triumphant, it's just downright fun.

...No single book will ever be able to fully explain why so much of impoverished America so consistently votes against its own economic self-interest. Likewise, no single book will ever fully explain the unique confluence of historical and cultural forces that created and continues to bulge the Bible Belt. But Bageant, a newcomer to the world of book writing, takes a pretty good stab at it. And he does so in a way that's accessible, raucous and unapologetically foul-mouthed. It's fun reading, and, given his depressing subject matter, that's quite a feat.

The State of American Discourse

On CNN Headline News Glen Beck says calling yourself progressive is just about lining yourself up with Stalin. I'm really at a loss at how to properly depict the stupidity and immaturity of this comment. But I guess it's for just fine for CNN.

They'll Spin Anything

Last week Pew Global Attitudes Project came out with a new global survey, one of the results being in fact, that the world to some respect is becoming a happier place. Obviously there can be a host of economic and non-economic reasons for this and for a discussion on the results you can see here.

One other part of the survey is interesting:

The percentage of Muslims saying that suicide bombing is justified in the defense of Islam has declined dramatically over the past five years in five of eight countries where trends are available. In Lebanon, for example, just 34% of Muslims say suicide bombings in the defense of Islam are often or sometimes justified; in 2002, 74% expressed this view. However, Palestinians stand out for their broad acceptance of suicide bombing. Seven-in-ten-Palestinians say this tactic is at least sometimes justified.

Now of course it is impossible to determine precisely what would cause this drop, though I would hazard a guess that daily viewing of the suicide bombers of Iraq killing fellow Muslims has had a dramatic effect.

Let's however check out how RealClearPolitics interpret just this one number. First though let's remember what Pew Global AttitudesProject published just one month ago:

The U.S. image remains abysmal in most Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia, and continues to decline among the publics of many of America's oldest allies. Favorable views of the U.S. are in single digits in Turkey (9%) and have declined to 15% in Pakistan. Currently, just 30% of Germans have a positive view of the U.S. – down from 42% as recently as two years ago – and favorable ratings inch ever lower in Great Britain and Canada.

Ok now RealClearPolitics (and I reiterate, this based alone on the survey of Muslims' view on suicide bombers).

We've been instructed by many sages that the rest of the world hates us and does not want to follow our example. The Pew Global numbers tell us something different

It's a good thing the United States is around to demonstrate that suicide bombing is wrong because the rest of the world just wouldn't understand this uniquely American way of thinking.

Model Society

A little tidbit of info you can cite at the water cooler, courtesy of Eric Alterman.

Believe it or not, by 11:02 a.m. of the first workday of work on the first day of 2007, one of these average CEOs "earned" more money than the minimum-wage workers in his company will make for the entire year.

Now you can understand why the Republicans have resisted a raise in the minimum wage (recently the Democrats managed to pass a whopping 70 cent increase to 5.85$ an hour). It might take until lunch for the CEOs to earn a minimum wage earner's yearly salary.

Once again, it's the poverty, stupid.

In what is for the most part a column that offers nothing at all of substance, in today's Miami Herald Michael Shifter, the vice-president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue, demonstrates the superficiality and obtuseness of today's political commentators. When discussing Alan Garcia's one year anniversary as president of Peru, Shifter states the following.

García is aware of the positive side of the globalization equation and is drawn to open markets. Peru is among the Latin American countries that has most benefited from the seemingly insatiable Chinese appetite for commodities, particularly in the mining sector. Peru's free-trade agreement with the United States has already been approved by the Peruvian congress, and in his first year García has been almost single-mindedly focused on getting it passed by the U.S. Congress.

Earlier Shifter noted that the Peruvian economy is growing at 8% (less than Venezuela's recent double digit growth but maybe the American media avoid discussing the growth in Venezuela because Chavez's popularity is only a little above 60% while Garcia's is soaring at 32% ... wait, I guess that can't be it either). But the point here I want to make is that the so-called globalization (I assume he means trade) can come in a wide variety of forms, as can market economies and neither are, as Shifter tries to portray, synonymous with "free-trade" deals with the U.S.

To be fair Shifter does note what the negative effects of "globalization" (his words)/ Washington consensus(my words) have been in Latin America in terms "huge disparities in wealth."  However he fails to cite, or really even mention, the widespread poverty (an issue I highlighted when discussing last year's election ... though it appears my optimism was misplaced).

So what does the vice-president of policy for the "the premier center for policy analysis, exchange, and communication on issues in Western Hemisphere affairs" advocate for Peru (in the only part of the column that could be really considered policy related)?

Such policy options are understandable for a government intent on maintaining order, but they [Garcia's response of ignoring or threatening to use "la mano duro" in combatting the increasing protest movements]  are no substitute for pursuing the urgent social and political reforms -- in justice and security institutions, for example -- that García has so far resisted. Although the unrest has temporarily subsided, it is bound to resurface, which would make García's remaining four years shaky indeed. Moderation is welcome, but it may not be enough.

I have no idea how reforming the judicial and security institutions can possibly alleviate the widespread poverty and inequality. In fact Shifter seems to be both rejecting and advocating the "mano dura" in the very same paragraph. Frankly for a supposed policy expert to simple make some vague reference to "justice and security institutions" as a cure for the Peruvian society's ills is to say the least wanting.

Nevertheless this is very typical of the type of analysis offered by those who have great difficulty in understanding that it is precisely the policies of the previous decade (obsessive deregulation of the economy and capital controls, the wholesale selling off of the state's resources, the failure to properly tax multinational and national corporations, the lack of social investment, etc) - and the failure to make a clean break with them that has led to a situation where the poorest of Latinos have simply run out of patience.

Yeah I know. I believe it is Robert McClelland who has said it best:

But hey, Chavez…blah, blah, blah.

Responsible Opposition Media

Occasionally the American media decides for a moment to interrupt its Paris Hilton coverage and turn south for a look at how Hugo Chavez is destroying democracy. A couple of months ago there was much ado about his denial of a broadcasting license to the coup mongering RCTV.

Meanwhile the presidents of countries like Ecuador and Bolivia are usually portrayed as puppets of the evil Chavez. Funny, though, how little one hears of truly contemptible journalistic behavior such as the shenanigans recently orchestrated by the opposition media in Ecuador. Mark Weisbrot:

...on May 21 the opposition TV media launched an assault on President Correa's finance minister, Ricardo Patiño.  In a seven minute grainy video clip from a hidden camera, they showed the minister meeting on February 12 with two representatives of a New York investment firm, as well as a former finance minister. Patiño talks about "scaring the markets," in what looks like a plot to manipulate the country's bond market. The clip, taken out of context, was shown repeatedly for days on the TV news, spliced with gratuitous, unrelated images of faceless people counting large amounts of cash.

It turns out that the video was authorized by Patiño himself, an odd thing to do if one is meeting to plan a crime. Patiño claims that the purpose of the meeting and the taping of it was to investigate corruption. And indeed the rest of the video – not shown on TV but presented in a transcript published in Ecuador's major newspapers – supports his explanation. In the rest of the meeting, Patiño is probing for information on corrupt activities – including past market manipulations. He allows the others to present and explain the possibilities in detail, never agreeing to go along with anything – just as one would expect in an investigation of this sort. In fact he states that it would be wrong to manipulate the market. The meeting ends with one of the investors stating that nothing would be done regarding the current debt payment – which was due three days after the videotaped meeting -- but that they could think about what to do in the future.

But the TV media's repeated, propagandistic images – playing on people's cynicism from decades of corrupt government -- had the most influence. This emboldened the opposition to make more wild allegations of secret deals with foreign banks, and vote to censure Patiño in the Congress – which they control. All of this has been done without anyone presenting evidence that the finance minister was involved in any wrongdoing.
 
If all this seems Orwellian, it is....

Of course if Ecuadorean government actually tried to hold the purveyors of this kind of garbage responsible to some degree for their misinfomation campaign and libelous assaults then this would be the end of free speech in Ecuador.

Moderates

Anne-Marie Slaughter in a ridiculous column in the Washington Post today:

The Bush administration, which has been notorious for playing to its hard-right base, has started reaching across the aisle, with its admirable immigration bill (even though it failed), with its new push for a diplomatic strategy toward North Korea and Iran, and above all with its choice of three seasoned moderates for important positions: Robert M. Gates as defense secretary, John D. Negroponte as deputy secretary of state and Robert B. Zoellick as World Bank president.

So this is what passes for moderate then?

My mind went back to May 1982 and I saw myself facing Negroponte in his office at the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa. I had gone to Honduras on a fact-finding delegation. We were looking for answers. Thirty-two women had fled the death squads of El Salvador after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 to take refuge in Honduras. One of them had been Romero's secretary. Some months after their arrival, these women were forcibly taken from their living quarters in Tegucigalpa, pushed into a van and disappeared. Our delegation was in Honduras to find out what had happened to these women.

John Negroponte listened to us as we exposed the facts. There had been eyewitnesses to the capture and we were well read on the documentation that previous delegations had gathered. Negroponte denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of these women. He insisted that the US Embassy did not interfere in the affairs of the Honduran government and it would be to our advantage to discuss the matter with the latter. Facts, however, reveal quite the contrary. During Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million; the US launched a covert war against Nicaragua and mined its harbors, and the US trained Honduran military to support the Contras.

John Negroponte worked closely with General Alvarez, Chief of the Armed Forces in Honduras, to enable the training of Honduran soldiers in psychological warfare, sabotage, and many types of human rights violations, including torture and kidnapping. Honduran and Salvadoran military were sent to the School of the Americas to receive training in counter-insurgency directed against people of their own country. The CIA created the infamous Honduran Intelligence Battalion 3-16 that was responsible for the murder of many Sandinistas. General Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, a graduate of the School of the Americas, was a founder and commander of Battalion 3-16. In 1982, the US negotiated access to airfields in Honduras and established a regional military training center for Central American forces, principally directed at improving fighting forces of the Salvadoran military.

In 1994, the Honduran Rights Commission outlined the torture and disappearance of at least 184 political opponents.

It also specifically accused John Negroponte of a number of human rights violations. Yet, back in his office that day in 1982, John Negroponte assured us that he had no idea what had happened to the women we were looking for. I had to wait 13 years to find out. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun in1996 Jack Binns, Negroponte's predecessor as US ambassador in Honduras, told how a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women we had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981 and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, before being placed in helicopters of the Salvadoran military. After take off from the airport in Tegucigalpa, the victims were thrown out of the helicopters. Binns told the Baltimore Sun that the North American authorities were well aware of what had happened and that it was a grave violation of human rights. But it was seen as part of Ronald Reagan's counterinsurgency policy.

Ya see, here lies the problem.

MSM in action

The Attorney General of the United States - the highest legal authority figure in the country - lies to the Congress. CBS dedicates 109 words on its newscast to the story.

Meanwhile a cat that can predict the future - that's worth 490 words.

A Quote on Vick

[update: see here for a pic of the kind of recreation that Vick is into. warning- graphic]

From Peter King's column at SI.

"My 7-year-old [Danielle] loves animals. We were out shopping for a dog. We were in the car, and I can't listen to sports radio anymore because she heard how they drowned and electrocuted some animals. I looked back there at a red light and she had tears in her eyes. She said, 'I don't understand why somebody would drown a dog.' Now I had to explain it as a parent. I said that sometimes people do stuff that is so terrible that you've got to offset that guy by doing something good. She just kept wiping her tears. She was really bothered by it. It's a stupid thing to do, obviously. But these guys get so arrogant, they don't think about it. You got $30 million, $40 million in the bank, they're on top of the world, no remorse and no one can stop them.''

-- Former Green Bay safety LeRoy Butler, in an interview with Bob McGinn of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Pretty much sums it up, no.

Excessive Hypocrisy

So you think that Bush gives a f*** about "excessive" or unjust sentences. He is an evil, stupid man that has no limits on hypocrisy.