I want my dress

Indonesia and President Bush
President Bush remained on vacation at his Crawford, Texas ranch clearing brush and bicycling as the death toll followed a macabre Moore’s law in Indonesia, doubling every 24 hours. After domestic and international outcry he agreed to a video teleconference and made a brief statement of sympathy. Meanwhile former president Clinton appeared on the BBC urging relief and made a veiled reference to Bush’s absence, “somebody’s has to assume leadership.”

The Bush White House in the form of spokesmen Trent Duffy said, "The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He didn't want to make a symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain.'" – Obviously a shot at Clinton. The Bush administration believed Clinton was grandstanding for the cameras. “Actions speak louder than words” was how one Bush aide described the president’s view. Truly a bizarre statement since the President had remained on vacation throughout the ordeal. The Official story: Clinton is exploiting the tragedy for political gain while Bush calmly assesses the situation from afar before launching into decisive action.

Conservative Pravda (or Fox News) quickly adopted the apologetics. The conservative commentator filling in for Sean Hannity’s radio show said that Bush was “calmly assessing the situation.” He ripped Clinton for rushing to an empty “I feel your pain” moment. Compare this reaction with the one Bush received post 9/11. What if Bush holed up in Crawford clearing brush and released a statement via video conference instead of arriving at ground zero with a bullhorn? Would they have accepted that as calmly assessing the situation? Bush could not personally do anything after 9/11. The real work was done by policemen, firefighters, and relief workers. Has anyone accused Bush of grandstanding with his bull horn? They won’t even accuse him of grandstanding on the aircraft carrier in his flight suit. Some commentators bizarrely discussed the Bush “package” and how it probably won him the female vote.

The Big Lie
UN humanitarian aid chief Jan Egeland criticized Western countries for their lack of commitment to humanitarian aid. Here is what he said, “We were more generous when we were less rich, many of the rich countries. And it is beyond me, why are we so stingy, really … even Christmas time should remind many Western countries at least how rich we have become.” Keep those words in mind when surveying the typical American pundit’s response. Note the message is aimed squarely at rich “Western countries.” The inclusive royal “we” is used four times indicating Egeland is addressing “rich Western countries” rather than the US specifically. He later clarified what should be obvious, “It has nothing to do with any particular country or any particular disaster.” But this has not stopped virtually every news organization in America to fabricate quotes insulting the US.

* A blurb on CNN read “Powell responds to UN insult of US.” In fact there was no insult of the US to respond to.

* The Washington Times removed “Western countries” from the quote to obfuscate the truth. They fabricated another quote reporting Egeland “told reporters that the United States has been ‘stingy.’”
From the Washington Times:

Soon after Powell announced a $15 million emergency assistance at a briefing in Washington Monday, Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian aid chief, told reporters that the United States has been "stingy" in helping the victims.
"We were more generous when we were less rich. ... It is beyond me, why are we so stingy, really ... even Christmas time should remind many Western countries at least how rich we have become," said Egeland.

* Fox News O’Reilley stand in John Gibson invented several quotes in the December 29th, 2004 episode. He said, “One UN official called the US stingy” and later asked a guest if the “US is chintzy.” As is obvious, Egeland did not single out the US as “stingy” and never used the word “chintzy.”

The correct storyline for the US media is that the UN is reflexively anti American and ungrateful. The media invented quotes in the absence of real ones to stir up the proper indignation. But there is an obvious question worth answering; was Egeland right? Are “Western nations… stingy?” Egeland clearly criticized the general state of foreign aid from rich countries. Note that even as Powell took offense to Egelands remarks he more than doubled the amount of aid from the US to Indonesia. Is that a backhanded admission of guilt?

Consider the following juxtaposition.
* The initial survey of aid donated from Western countries was as follows; Japan $30,000, France $170,000, Australia $7.6 million, Britain $600,000, Canada $814,300, China $2.6 million, European Union $3.5 million, and the US initially pledged $15 million.

* The US allocated $3 billion for the Hurricane disaster relief fund in America. The number of US deaths from those four hurricanes was 124. In contrast the Indonesian tsunami may have killed over 100,000, sucked entire cities to sea, and wiped everything out on several islands. The initial aid packages are frankly, embarassing. The US dwarfed the other countries – but even $15 million is woefully inadequate. (For more see here.)

Egeland’s comments are clearly applicable for the Western response to the Indonesian catastrophe. However, Egeland was remarking on the overall foreign assistance packages of Western countries. To this issue we now turn. Juan Cole summarizes the aid as relates to GNP nicely.

Bush is an MBA, so he knows very well the difference between absolute numbers and per capita ones. Let's see Australia offered US $27 million in aid for victims of the tsunami. Australia's population is about 20 million. Its gross domestic product is about $500 billion per year. Surely anyone can see that Australia's $27 million is far more per person than Bush's $35 million. Australia's works out to $1.35 per person. The US contribution as it now stands is about 9 cents per person. So, yes, the US is giving more in absolute terms. But on a per person basis, it is being far more stingy so far. And Australians are less wealthy than Americans, making on average US $25,000 per year per person, whereas Americans make $38,000 per year per person. So even if Australians and Americans were both giving $1.35 per person, the Australians would be making the bigger sacrifice. But they aren't both giving $1.35; the Bush administration is so far giving an American contribution of nine cents a person.

The apparent inability of the American public to do basic math or to understand the difference between absolute numbers and proportional ones helps account for why Bush's crazy tax cut schemes have been so popular. Americans don't seem to realize that Bush gave ordinary people checks for $300 or $600, but is giving billionnaires checks for millions. A percentage cut across the board results in far higher absolute numbers for the super-wealthy than for the fast food workers. But, well, if people like being screwed over, then that is their democratic right.

Bush's underlining of the $2.5 billion he says the United States gave in emergency humanitarian aid last year annoyed the hell out of me. He said it was 40% of such monies given by the industrialized world. But the US is the world's largest economy, and neither on a per capita basis nor as a percentage of GDP is that very much money. Bush said "billion" as though it were an astronomical sum. But he spends a billion dollars a week in Iraq, without batting an eye. That's right. Two weeks of his post-war war in Iraq costs as much as everything the US spent on emergency humanitarian assistance in 2003 for all the countries in the world.

Conservative commentators have been quick to dismiss aid as a percentage of GNP, instead focusing on real dollars. It is irrational to look at economic generosity in anything other than percentages as relates to GNP. Comparisons are meaningless without a sense of scale. Someone who goes to Church as much as Bush does should know this, as they are supposed to tithe 10% of what they make, tithing obligations are not fixed on a dollar amount.

This is also why the 21 signatory countries (including the US) of UN Agenda 21 agreed that the goalpost of developmental aid as a percentage of GNP instead of a fixed dollar amount. In this respect, the US is next to last or dead last along with Japan. Further more, much of US aid is used as a political weapon.

It is accurate to say that the US probably does more than any single nation (the EU gives more than the US) because of the real dollar amounts, but it is inaccurate to say they are the most generous. Commentators have been quick to conflate the two distinctions. Bush reinforced the mistaken perception with his public statements.

I want my dresses
Refugees returned to Fallujah and found sewerage in the streets, bombed out homes, gun fights, and charred corpses. Things are so bad people are returning to squalid shelters in Baghdad. The US has a strict set of rules for living in Fallujah, no cars allowed, males must carry special identification cards at all time, a 6 PM curfew, no visitors, public gatherings are illegal, and visitors are banned. People are unable to take anything out of their homes because of a no looting policy. While the strict authoritarian and draconian rules are necessary to protect American troops, it is fairly obvious that the battle for hearts and minds is lost. Also remember that the demolition of Fallujah was not to break the insurgency, but to ready the country for election season.
From the LA Times:

Yasser Abbas Atiya swore he'd sooner sleep on the streets of his beloved hometown of Fallouja than spend another night in the squalid Baghdad shelter where his family had been squatting.

Thirty minutes after he returned home this week, however, Atiya had seen enough. He left in disgust and had no plans to go back.

"I couldn't stand it," the grocer said. "I was born in that town. I know every inch of it. But when I got there, I didn't recognize it."

Lakes of sewage in the streets. The smell of corpses inside charred buildings. No water or electricity. Long waits and thorough searches by U.S. troops at checkpoints. Warnings to watch out for land mines and booby traps. Occasional gunfire between troops and insurgents.

"I thought, 'This is not my town,' " Atiya said Tuesday after going back to the abandoned Baghdad clinic his family shares with nearly 100 other displaced Falloujans. "How can I take my family to live there?"

The initial clamor by an estimated 200,000 refugees to return to the homes they had fled last month is being replaced by a bitter resignation that the city remains largely uninhabitable and unsafe. Hopes of quickly restoring normality to the restive Sunni Muslim city are fading, raising questions about whether Fallouja will be ready to participate in the Jan. 30 national election.
…
But the effort to win the hearts and minds of the local population has fallen flat as soon as returning homeowners see the burned buildings, piles of rubble and heavy troop presence. The residents say voting is the last thing on their minds..

"What election?" Atiya, 35, asked. "I'm a refugee. How can a refugee take part in an election? Let me get back home and then I'll talk about elections."

After enduring three hours of military checkpoints and searches, Atiya and two brothers anxiously reentered the city Monday, uncertain what to expect.

U.S. troops handed them leaflets warning against a myriad of dangers and advising them that the U.S. military could not guarantee their safety. Don't drink the water, the leaflets warned, or eat food left behind.

Every resident is required to carry a small card outlining special new rules for the city. There's a 6 p.m. curfew. No weapons are allowed. Graffiti and public gatherings are illegal. Cars and visitors are banned.

Males between the ages of 15 and 55 must carry special identification cards. U.S. military officials have announced plans to use fingerprinting and retina scans to prevent insurgents from returning.

As Atiya and his brothers traveled through the city and saw the destruction, they braced for the worst. When he caught a glimpse of his roof, Atiya's first emotion was relief. The house was still there.

As they drew closer, however, Atiya and his brothers began to curse. A gaping hole in the two-story house appeared to have been caused by a tank, whose tracks were visible in the mud, he said. Most of the furniture was smashed. "Half my house was demolished," Atiya said.

In the kitchen, cabinets had been ripped from the walls, he said. Others were emptied of their contents, which lay in heaps on the floor.

"Every dish was broken, every cup, every plate, as if someone had just stood there breaking one dish after another," said Atiya's brother Raaid Abbas, 37. "Why?"

The brothers don't know who ransacked the house, but they blame American troops, who they say left muddy boot prints.

Military officials expressed sympathy with the plight of returning residents but said the blame should rest with militants who took control of the city and continued to hide among the population.
…
The brothers quickly determined that the house, where all three had been born, was uninhabitable. They had wanted to leave with some supplies, such as a kerosene heater, for use at the Baghdad shelter.But in an effort to prevent theft and looting, U.S. troops prohibited residents from removing property from the city. The most the brothers could do was sneak out some extra clothing, which they wore as they left.

When the brothers returned to Baghdad and recounted their stories, other Falloujans shook their heads in amazement.

"After I heard what they said, I'm not willing to go back," said Latif Jasim, 45.

Atiya broke the bad news to his wife and four children. His youngest daughter, Noora, 4, had trouble understanding why she couldn't return home. "I want my dresses," she said, hiding shyly behind an older brother.

Fox’s John Gibson called for a Cambodian style US bombing campaign over Syria for aiding the Iraqi insurgency. He noted while filling in for Bill O’Reilley on December 29, 2004 that “the army is stretched thin” but the “air force has time on their hands.” The only proof thus far that Syria is directly aiding the insurgency is a State Department press release reported by the AP and published in the NYT. Gibson inaccurately told one caller that the story came from the NYT.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration accused Syria on Tuesday of helping insurgents in Iraq by giving haven to elements of the deposed Saddam Hussein regime.

``And it is a problem that we think Syria needs to act to stop,'' State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said Tuesday.
…
Reports circulated in Damascus, meanwhile, that key support for the insurgents in Iraq was coming from a half brother of Saddam Hussein and Baath Party leaders in the Syrian capital.

Ereli said Syrian officials ``have done some things with respect to the border and working with the Iraqis to control the border.''

I assume the “reports circulating in Damascus” are also from State Department. (Beware the passive voice.)
In a subsequent AP report Syria denied the charge.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- Syria is responding with a mixture of bravado and denial to mounting accusations by the United States and Iraq that it's a staging ground for the Iraqi insurgency with key support coming from a half brother of Saddam Hussein and Baath Party leaders here.

Syria's Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa struck a defiant tone in an address at the annual meeting of leaders of the National Progressive Front -- the country's highest ruling body -- in the most extensive comments yet by a senior Syrian official on the subject.

``They accuse Syria of sending money and arms,'' he said, but the Iraqi people ``have plenty of money and arms and we are the ones who worry about the movement of arms from Iraq to Syria.''

The United States succeeded in occupying Iraq, ``but it has failed at everything else,'' Al-Sharaa said Monday. ``The problem is that the United States had thought it was making progress in Iraq. But it started to see a change in the past two months and therefore the campaign against Syria comes within the framework of the pressure the occupation forces in Iraq feel.''
…
In response to the stream of accusations, Syria has gone out of its way to try to demonstrate its innocence. Last month, it took journalists on an unusual tour of a section of its 380-mile border with Iraq, showing them bulldozers making a 4-yard-high barrier along the frontier and saying they were using round-the-clock patrols and new observation posts to try to stop foreign fighters from getting into Iraq.

Syria has also held talks with a U.S.-led coalition military delegation on the matter and is discussing with Baghdad what do to about Iraq money frozen from the Saddam regime -- estimated at $261 million stashed in Syrian banks

I have no way of knowing who is telling the truth, and don’t feel particularly compelled to trust Syria. But until a more rigourous investigation into the network of support is undertaken I don’t think it is rational call for a Cambodia style bombing based on the State Department’s accusations, who have presented no hard evidence and does not have a particularly unblemished record for telling the truth.

Solicitation letter

What is happening in Indonesia is a horrific tragedy. As of now the death toll stands at 80,000. Every 6 hours the body count climbs another 5000. The stories are heartbreaking. Most of the dead are children, followed by women and the elderly. Parents swept into the waters clung to their children until torn apart by debris and surging tides. Bodies are hanging in trees and wedged in between fence posts. The World Health Organization is already in action trying to bury the dead, hauling bodies in trucks and bulldozing them in mass graves. They fear an epidemic of disease from the rotting corpses of humans and animals within days. The initial damage estimate totals billions of dollars.

The behavior of all Western countries in response has been meager in proportion to the scale of disaster. Here is a survey of initial aid donated from rich countries; Japan $30,000, France $170,000, Australia $7.6 million, Britain $600,000, Canada $814,300, China $2.6 million, European Union $3.5 million, and the US initially pledged $15 million. In response a UN official from Norway, Jan Egeland, made a disparaging statement about the generosity of rich nations, "We were more generous when we were less rich, many of the rich countries. It is beyond me why we are so stingy...Actually foreign assistance for many countries now is 0.1 or 0.2 percent of gross national income, that is stingy."

The United States took umbrage from Egeland’s remark, and commentators have frequently misrepresented Egeland’s comments on all rich nations as a national attack on the US. Colin Powell responded defensively, pointing out that the US leads all nations in foreign aid dollars (although they are last among the 21 industrialized nations who signed the 1992 Rio De Janeiro Earth Summit in terms of aid as a percentage of GNP) and immediately pledged another $20 million on top of the initial $15 million. There are two issues worth commenting on, the general state of foreign aid to developing countries from industrialized nations and the initial aid packages to the Indonesian disaster, which is one of the worst human catastrophes in several centuries. The more pressing issue is Indonesia.

Compare the US’s responses to this catastrophe and the four hurricanes that swept through Florida this year; Charley, Ivan, Francis, and Jeanne. In the aftermath of Florida’s hurricanes President Bush immediately flew to Florida to survey the damage. He set aside $3.17 billion, 9000% more than the aid for Indonesia, of which almost $1 billion has been spent. The US deaths from the four Florida hurricanes totaled 124. In the aftermath of the tsunami President Bush was on vacation “clearing brush and bicycling” at his Crawford, Texas ranch and as of this writing has agreed to a meeting of the National Security Council by video conference. The US’s response political and financial response has thus far been languid and inadequate. The rest of the industrialized world has reacted much more shamefully.

For a bit more perspective on the US’s initial response: Consider that on the same day the US pledged $35 million in aid a story appeared in the New York Times about Wall Street bonuses. Some CEOs received bonuses of over $20 million in 2004. When the reporter asked one executive how he would spend his money, he briefly reflected and answered, “Maybe a little Porsche for the Hamptons house, but probably not.” In another story one can find that the price tag for the upcoming Presidential inauguration party will exceed $40 million – before security costs. In a country rich enough to support such extravagance – more can certainly be done.

There is good news. Under domestic and foreign pressure the US government is expected to pledge more money and pressure other countries to follow their lead. Equally as important is that people can help directly with very little effort. (At http://www.redcross.org/ it is possible to donate as little as $5.00 which anyone should be able to afford.) This disaster presents an opportunity for people of the Western world to directly intervene on behalf of their government’s behavior and help save thousands of lives. International relief agencies are collecting money for Indonesia. A list of agencies can be found

Send Aid to the Red Cross

I really have no idea what morality people have. I try not to personalize this blog because I think nothing could be more boring than reading about someone’s little life and the weird little shit that happens on a day to day basis.

Context:
I have a bunch of friends who get into discussions via email. On busy days I turn off my client to ignore them. Today is not a busy day so I dipped into the discussion, especially in light of the awful catastrophe in Indonesia which has a body count of about 50,000 as of this writing. The number is going to climb higher, and the four horsemen sans War are going to drive the number even higher in the next few months. The damage will cost billions to repair.

Their morality (or lack thereof) is appalling. The US initially pledged $15 million in disaster relief. (On the same day a NYT article discussed bonuses for Wall Street bankers. One banker received $20 million in bonuses.) A UN official from Norway complained about the niggardly donations rich countries give to causes such as these. Later today the US decided to give much more, at least in part because of the outcry his statements caused. So he probably saved thousands of lives by speaking out. My friends are complaining in their super patriot voices that the guy has no right to say anything about what we give. Some of them made an analogy comparing his ungratefulness to someone complaining about a Christmas present.

They wanted to compare our aid to other countries, as if that would somehow make not giving enough money would be ok in a backwards moral metric. They argued that we give more than any other country in foreign aid. While true, as a ratio of GNP the US is last among 20 countries. And the percentage of GNP is the number that is important, as the 1992 Rio De Janiero Earth summit specified. The Earth summit was a meeting of wealthy nations, including the US, which entered a pact to give .7% of GNP in development assistance aid. Only a few Scandinavian countries have met the target thus far, and US is furthest from reaching it.

I don’t get what makes these people so indignant when anyone criticizes the US. (It should be noted that the UN official actually made remarks aimed at rich countries, not specifically the US.) One of them even said no one has the right to criticize the US unless they live in the US. That is absurd, by the same argument we have no right to criticize the actions of any country unless we live there.

Here are some relevant quotes that will have my teeth grinding tonight.

“I agree, but no one has the right, aside from the US people, to say that this is not enough.”

“Actually, from my understanding the UN called upon the richest nations to give .7 but only the Scandinavian countries do so. Even if we only give .13, we still give more food AND aid than anyone else in the entire globe. We can't always afford to be the world's welfare system.”
Note – his understanding of Agenda 22 is WRONG

“The US doesn't owe any more than we already give, so anything over and above what we already give should be received gratefully.

I would think that only a retarded kid wouldn't get it.”

“Oh, then congratulations on convincing us that the US is a wealthy nation. For a second there, I didn't believe it. Now that I understand how prosperous we are, let me reiterate that it's still irrelevant. No one argued that we weren't a rich nation. What we argued was that our wealth is irrelevant. Whatever we give is being generous, because we don't owe anyone anything.

“If my child gets $30 from a rich friend of his for Christmas, I would never let him be ungrateful and say, "Thanks a lot jerk! I know you can do better than this!" I'll instead teach him to say thank you because that friend didn't have to give him anything.”

“I am not saying that $15 million is a good number. How much has everyone else contributed though. England, Germany, Japan, China, Russia, France, Spain, Mexico, Canada and other countries with stable economies should be looked at as well.”

“I was portraying the UN guy, I'm inclined not to donate a damn penny just because of his arrogant ass”

Go to RedCross.org and make a donation. NOW!

A Foreign Affair

Foreign Affairs posted a “slew” of new articles. Very interesting articles from a very interesting journal.

In Did North Korea Cheat? By Selig S. Harrison the author questions the Administrations claims about North Korea’s nuclear program in light of the dishonest propaganda campaign around the Iraq war.

How much credible evidence is there to back up Washington's uranium accusation? Although it is now widely recognized that the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence data it used to justify the invasion of Iraq, most observers have accepted at face value the assessments the administration has used to reverse the previously established U.S. policy toward North Korea.

It seems to me a very relevant question. Why take anything at face value? The author’s view is that there is no credible evidence that North Korea has High Energy Uranium production capabilities. The distinction that is often ignored or paved over is between Low Energy Uranium (LEU) and High Energy Uranium (HEU). LEU is for civilian purposes and HEU is military. HEU is MUCH harder to produce. I am getting a bit ahead of myself.

The struggle started when a North Korean official, First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju, made a non denial denial about weapons programs to the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, James Kelly. Kelly told Ju he had evidence of a uranium program and Kelly claimed Ju acknowledged it. However Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun said it was a bit more nuanced than that.

According to Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun, was deliberately ambiguous: that North Korea is "entitled" to have such a program or "an even more powerful one" to deter a pre-emptive U.S. attack. According to Paek, Kang also stated that North Korea is entitled to pursue an "ncnd" (neither confirm nor deny) policy concerning the specifics of its nuclear capabilities, just as the United States does--especially since the two countries remain belligerents in the technically unfinished Korean War.

Now what is interesting is the context all of this occurred in. Japan and South Korea had been making diplomatic moves to North Korea outside of Washington’s approval. South Korea and North Korea were working on a move to “de-mine” the militarized zone and build some railroad links and a new industrial zone which Washington was not in favor of. After a political struggle Washington grudgingly approved of the dethawing.

But Washington was very worried that it was losing control of North Korea. The following was before Kelly’s visit.

The Bush administration "saw a real possibility that its options on the [Korean] peninsula would increasingly be driven by the policy agendas of others," wrote Jonathan Pollack, chairman of the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College in the summer of 2003

The CIA never made a case based on specifics supporting its case that North Korea had resumed its weapons-grade uranium enrichment program. They relied on generalities and unverified claims under the guise of security. Harrison notes that this is suspect because the other countries involved in the situation (China, Russia, Japan, South Korea) have said that the US has presented no evidence to them as well. It is understandable if the US doesn’t want to release evidence to the public which would compromise security, but it is puzzling that they won’t present it to allies whom they are trying to persuade. There are also serious questions about whether North Korea ever successfully purchased equipment necessary for HEU production.

But there is still more to the story. North Korea lacks the technical capacity for HEU. As I mentioned HEU is HARD to make. Equipment brakes frequently. The energy required for production is beyond North Korea’s capacities.

Richard Garwin, a respected nuclear scientist, has estimated that 1,300 high-performance centrifuges would have to operate full time for three years to make the 60 kilograms of fissile material needed for a basic ("gun-type") nuclear weapon. Accomplishing that would require an enormous sustained input of electricity, without fluctuation or interruption. Moreover, the operation of a multi-centrifuge "cascade" requires a high-powered motor with a speed twice that of a MiG-21 jet engine. North Korea cannot produce engines even for its Russian-supplied MiGs, and it has only limited, highly unreliable electricity capabilities. It is therefore unlikely that the country is able at present to build or operate the equipment needed, over a long period, to produce weapons-grade uranium.

It is likely that North Korea is producing LEU for civilian usage. Moreover there is a lot of motivation for such production due to a 2002 US oil embargo. LEU is in technical violation of a few Korean agreements, but not in the Non-Proliferation Treaty which is at the heart of US arguments. It is an interesting discussion, and unfortunately the average person does not know the difference between LEU and HEU production.

Another piece, Grand Strategy in the Second Term by Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis lays out a new security strategy for the second Bush term. The piece is fairly puzzling to me; the author lauds Democracy except when it is put to use.

The slight statistical edge of the voting electorate in favor of Bush is a “renewed and strengthened electoral mandate.” It is odd because many of Bush’s voters do not agree with Bush’s policies or plans as polls demonstrate. No matter how one runs through the numbers, public opinion significantly differs from Bush policy on a wide range of issues.

1. According to a Gallup poll before the election 10% of voters said their vote was based on “agendas/ideas/platforms/goals”. The rest voted for “qualities.”

2. According to a Chicago Council for Foreign Affairs survey 91% of Americans want to improve the global environment, 90% want to combat world hunger, and 81% want to strengthen the UN. Around 70% support joining the Kyoto agreement, 75% support participating in the International Criminal Court, 57% support the World Court, and 70% do not want the US to torture prisoners in the war on terror.

The Administration stands directly opposed to every one of those issues. Gaddis even cites these problems on the international stage inadvertently undermining his contention that Bush has a “public mandate” for his policies. He writes of “Bush's unnecessarily harsh rejections of the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.”

Gaddis partially explains the current geopolitical quagmire the Administration is in (emphasis mine), “It is never a good idea to insult potential allies, however outrageous their behavior may have been.” Gaddis is referring to the international opposition to Bush’s policies and the Iraq war. Every population save Israel was against the Iraq war. Many governments went against their constituents and joined the coalition of the willing. For a President that “set out to democratize the Middle East” it is interesting that potential allies who acted according to will of their constituencies are “outrageous.” Democracy is a good thing when justifying a war, a bad thing when it interferes. “Outrageous behavior” in this case means listening to the voice of the people.

There are several other good articles on there worth checking out. Go look.

Don't Cry for the IMF

There was an interesting article in the NYT over the weekend about Argentina’s economic miracle. For those that do not know Argentina was devastated economically back in December, 2001 (passive voice - you find out what devestated them in a minute). They came back by ignoring the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) demands and used government spending to stimulate their economy.

Greg Palast and Joseph Stiglitz have documented the IMF and World Bank’s trail of economic destruction. Stiglitz is a former head of the World Bank Nobel Prize winner who was fired when he spoke out in internal protest at the World Bank. Palast is an American investigative journalist working in England who once studied under the famous economist Milton Friedman in Chicago. Palast possesses reams of internal documents from the IMF and World Bank where in stark language they literally lay out their plans to destroy poor countries. Stiglitz and Palast speak out against the economic travesties perpetuated by these institutions and their almost religious belief in Friedman free market theory.

The IMF is a transnational conglomerate of banks which controls money flows and loans into and out of poor developing countries. They put stipulations on loans that require countries to follow a four step process. If the do not follow the IMF demands then they are denied foreign loans which is another way of saying that it makes “their economy scream.” Here are the four steps:
1) Free trade: “Free trade” basically means that external corporations can come in and buy whatever they
2) Flexible labor markets: “Flexible labor markets” is just another way of saying cheap labor exploitation. It means smashing unions and cutting wages.
3) Privatization: “Privatization” means the natural resources such as water and electricity are sold. Then the basic needs are subjected to the free market. This is always followed by inflated prices. Californians got a taste of this from Enron a few years ago with an artificial energy crisis.
4) Reduced government budgets and regulation: The government agrees not to interfere with any of the above mess and to cut spending. Cutting government spending during an economic downturn is suicide.

The times article is funny because the reporter presented two sides to the story about Argentina’s resurrection. On the one hand the reporter interviews people who believe Argentina should get in line with the IMF and people who disagree. He mentions Argentina got into the economic mess because before the government rejected the IMFs guidelines, it followed them. (Palast documents the same story of many countries that follow the IMF plan. They keep on believing in the absence of evidence, hence the reference to religion above.) It would be like two engineers with two separate plans to make a car run more efficiently. They try one plan, which always causes the engine to stall. They implement the other plan which succeeds. The engineer of the stall plan then insists that his plan is still viable and his colleague’s plan is doomed.

Here is Palast describing some documents he obtained on Argentina from the World Bank:

The June 2001 document [Country Assistance Strategy], World Bank President James Wolfensohn expressed particular pride that Argentina's Government had made 'a $3 billion cut in primary expenditures'. Slicing government spending in the midst of a recession is economic suicide, killing demand when it's most needed. Who could have pushed the banks to demand such a berserk programme? The answer is hinted at in the document. That $3 billion cut will 'accommodat[e] the increase in interest obligations' to pay off those foreign banks - Citibank, Chase Manhattan Bank, Bank of America, Credit Suisse, and Lloyds Bank - who, having bled the nation of capital, lent Argentina back its own money at rates that can only be called usury. Foreign banks working with the IMF had demanded that Argentina pay a whopping 16-per-cent risk premium above US Treasury lending rates.
…
Argentina sold off everything including the kitchen-sink tap. The World Bank beams: 'Almost all major utilities have been privatized.' That includes the sale of water systems to Enron of Texas and Vivendi of Paris, companies which immediately fired workers en masse, let the pipe systems fall apart and raised prices as much as 400 per cent. Wolfensohn, for some reason, is surprised to note that after these privatizations, the poor lack access to clean water.

Anyone who wants to understand the world in practice compared to theory would do well to read either’s work. (Hint, Hint El Presidente.)

Tracer (Sa)Fire

William Safire departed reality this week in his New York Times column. In a recent piece titled Roth Part II he constructs a fantasy to justify the Iraq war. It is a tacit admission that the reality to date indicts the current war as illegal. (Philip Roth authored a book about what might have happened if F.D.R. lost the 1940 election to Hitler-appeaser Charles Lindbergh.) In a subsequent piece Wave of the Future Safire admits to “tactical misjudgments” on Iraq but he seemingly builds upon his fantasy-reality in Roth Part II to conclude that it “was and is the right war.” With these two columns Safire adds a new dimension to Cognitive Dissonance. He goes beyond discarding evidence that conflicts with his world view; he simply invents a new reality laden with fictitious evidence. What follows is Safire’s’ fantasy narrative and a fact based deconstruction.

Safire’s ode to what might have been starts with “a scene in a Tikrit palace where Saddam lays out his plan to (a) amass billions through a U.N. oil-for-food scam and his secret oil pipeline to Syria, (b) increase contacts with Al Qaeda, (c) take leadership of the Arab world by developing W.M.D. or pretending to have them already, and (d) openly challenging Bush.” Note the carefully crafted phrase, “contacts with Al Qaeda.” Safire concedes there was no “collaborative operational relationship” between the two parties as the 9/11 commission found.

Saddam and Bin Laden were more often rivals than bedfellows. When Saddam invaded Kuwait Bin Laden voiced his intention to bring Saddam down and beat Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. Bin Laden told an Islamic theologian and a Saudi Prince, "I want to fight against Saddam, an infidel. I want to establish a guerrilla war against Iraq." Bin Laden supported the anti-Saddam Islamic terrorist group that would become Ansar Al Islam in the autonomous Kurdistan region. Iraq ignored requests from Bin Laden in 1995 to create terror training camps in Iraq. (American intelligence have doubts the meeting where Bin Laden allegedly requested Iraqi help took place.) Bin Laden formed Al Qaeda with the specific aim of overthrowing secular regimes in the Islamic world like Hussein’s before training his sights on the west. The contacts between the two are tenuous, murky, and sometimes hostile. Safire says Saddam planned on increasing his contacts with Al Qaeda – which implies 2 things.
1.Saddam had extensive working contacts and influence within Al Qaeda.
2.Saddam wanted to expand his involvement in Al Qaeda to a working relationship.
Both implications are false.

At the same time Saddam would “take leadership of the Arab world.” In reality Saddam was hated and distrusted by Arab leaders, as was Bin Laden. Saudi Arabia and the Sudan exiled Bin Laden. Ultimately the alienated Taliban granted him refuge in Afghanistan, but even the radical Taliban did not trust Bin Laden and almost exiled him several times. If Saddam had aligned himself with Bin Laden the rest of the Arab world would have seen him as an even more dangerous outlaw. Safire’s fantasy is inconsistent. Increasing involvement with Al Qaeda would undermine Saddam’s already discredited leadership in the Arab world. Safire did not present any evidence that Saddam enjoyed popularity or persuasion amongst any Arab populations.

Safire continues:

Back in D.C., at a critical go-no-go meeting in the Situation Room, Bush sides with Powell not to invade Iraq. Wolfowitz enters with news of a shoot-down of our "Northern Watch" aircraft by Iraq. Kofi Annan, on CNN, asks: What do we expect - the U.S. flies over sovereign Iraqi territory. Bush decides against his aides' audacious regime-change proposal, and chooses a restrained, Clintonian pinprick response with cruise missiles.

Whatever the legality or moral qualms surrounding the “Clintonian pinprick response,” the Duelfer Report credited it for finishing off what was left of the Iraqi infrastructure for weapons programs. In Safire’s yarn the downing of an American plane and neutered restraint from the White House leads to a situation where Saddam “becomes an iconic, heroic figure in the Arab and Muslim world.” As a result of his ability to gain “greater financial and weaponry strength” daily he is able to act without “fear of retaliation” and offer “safe haven in Iraq to bin Laden and followers seeking a center of operations.” Safire again ignores the unlikely ideological and political pairing of Bin Laden and Hussein, as covered above.

Safire’s newly empowered Saddam challenges Israel. The “Zionist entity is faced by a Hamas-dominated P.L.O. … heavily financed by Saddam. In 2003, he doubles his payments to the families of suicide bombers, ties the violent intifada tightly to Baghdad-based Qaeda, and sees to it that a Palestinian of his choice is ready to succeed Arafat.” Only one assertion is based in fact and it is false. Saddam donated money to a Palestinian aid group (PALF) which disbursed payments to approximately 1500 families with relatives who died in the 2000 intifada; 72 of which were suicide bombers. The suicide bombers families received more money – but the amount dispersed was determined by the PALF and not Saddam. It is misleading to claim Saddam funded suicide bombers or made "payments to the families of suicide bombers." The money was given posthumously, to families of the deceased generally and not specifically to bombers, and indirectly through an aid agency – not as a payoff before hand or for general funding.

In Safire’s fantasy Saddam pulls the strings of the PLO and appoints its leadership. Safire does not consider that Palestinians are people separate from Iraq with their own distinct motivations and concerns wholly different from Saddam Hussein’s. The unspoken racist assumption is that all Arabs think alike, uniformly sympathetic to Al Qaeda, and want to destroy Israel. For the record, the PLO is a leftwing secular based political organization. A Qaeda-PLO coupling is highly unlikely, especially considering that one of Bin Laden’s earliest influences was a founder of the PLOs political rival Hamas, Abdullah Azzam.

What is Safire's solution to a newly empowered Saddam Hussein? A war mongering Democrat ascends to the White House and overthrows Saddam. The message is pretty clear; the only option was war regardless of who is in office. If it did not happen then it would have happened now. It is sad that the terms of debate are no longer based in reality, or even in skewed reality (although there is that in Safire’s piece.) The debate is now centered in an alternate reality. The Iraq war is not justified by self defense because of Saddam’s support for terrorists and weapons programs. Safire justifies the war based on a fantasy. If reality does not support your stance, invent one that does.

In Safire’s subsequent column, Wave of the Future, he admits to “tactical” rather than “strategic” misjudgments about the Iraq war. Roth Part II is a tacit admission that the war is illegal. There would be no reason to construct an alternate reality if the present one sufficiently justified the use of force. In Wave of the Future Safire asserts that the war was right and narrows the scope and range of discussion.
Safire writes:

I now admit to having expected the war in Iraq to be won in a matter of months, not years. Saddam's plan to disperse his forces and conduct a murderous insurgency, abetted by his terrorist allies, was a surprise.

This by no means suggests that President Bush's decision to overthrow a dangerous despotism was a mistake. On the contrary, it was and is the right war (against a genocidal maniac who was gaining strength) in the right place (the Middle East cradle of terror) for the right purpose (to get the Arab street out of the rut of hatred and onto a path to freedom).

Saddam did not plan the current insurgency as it stands today. Saddam believed a geurrilla war would drive the Americans out in a relatively short time and allow him to resume his dictatorship. However, he feared that if the insurgency lasted too long his powerbase would collapse as religous militants took control. A memo from Saddam Hussein before the war to his henchmen warned against alliances with religious terrorists because they would threaten his power. The current insurgency is not driven by Saddam loyalty or led by Saddam’s terrorist allies (whomsoever that may be.) Whatever those reasons factor into the current problems, they are minimal. The insurgency is not a coherent military campaign. It is chaotic and consists of many groups with differing goals and motivations. Saddam planned on a guerrilla war but the insurgency has taken a life of its own. Saddam feared that Islamic based terrorists would take hold in Iraq and unsurp his power – they were not his allies.

Safire asserts the “genocidal maniac” (no argument there) “was gaining strength.” How he was accomplishing this is unknown. Despite the oil for food corruption, Hussein’s regime was decaying and severely weakened. His scientists misled him about their weapons programs to get funds for other research. New documents have surfaced indicating that Saddam obfuscated the truth about his weapons out of fear for his neighbors. A large portion of Iraq was not under his control and he had no air force – a necessary requisite for aggression in modern warfare. He was corrupt and dangerous, but definitely not “gaining strength.”

Safire proposes a deal for the anti-war crowd (directly):

In return for today's grudging concession of tactical misjudgment, however, I claim this expectation: When and if we discover hidden supplies of germ weapons in Iraq or Syria, and as future confessions reveal the extent of connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam, the legion of war critics will forthrightly admit their certitude was misplaced.

Somehow Syria’s germ supplies factor into the reasons for invading Iraq now. If and when future generations find new evidence of Iraqi connections with Al Qaeda or weapons programs in Iraq, however unlikely, it still does not justify the invasion. To be precise, you act on evidence and knowledge you have. Wild speculation and undocumented accusations do not justify acting on conclusions based on presupposed realities. No legal system could work this way, much less one governing the rules of warfare. If the US government jailed every corporate CEO on the assumption that they are involved in a corporate scandal would; it would not be justifiable if at a later date new evidence turned up indicating that some were in fact corrupt. On a global scale, wars should not be retroactively fitted with justifications. More importantly Safire’s seeks to delay the judgment of Iraq indefinitely as there is always the possibility that new evidence will turn up.

Safire perpetuates the intellectual hoax that the President acted on the best available intelligence and therefore believed he was acting on solid evidence and knowledge. This explanation ignores the mountains of evidence showing that the Administration cherry picked information, presented debunked intelligence as solid, and pressured analysts to give them the “right” information. There are many books, articles, and studies which demonstrate this point clearly with no rebuttal beyond rhetorical flair. It is beyond the scope of this article to review them here.

Safire significantly narrows the scope of democratic debate claiming, “The only debate in the US now seems to be about whether to raise the number of troops there,” adding “only a small minority (editorial note: 15%) is calling for a pullout.” It is interesting that in what Safire terms “the battle for democracy in the region” the democratic opinion of Iraqis is not considered. The opinion of Iraqis outside of the Kurds is for immediate American withdrawal. They overwhelmingly view the continued American presence as an occupying rather than liberating force. Iraqis believe American troops are destabilizing the country and undermining security. “Liberty’s light” continues to shine for Safire.

Safire repeats his misleading claim that Saddam was a “financial backer of suicide bombers” which has been addressed above. In what must be a cynical statement Safire posits that “our military activism emboldened Israel to risk withdrawal from Gaza” in a chain of events that has “revivified the prospect of peace in the Holy Land.” The Israeli pullout of Gaza is advancing the "prospect of peace" in Israeli. President Bush has stated that the "prospect for peace" rests unequivocally on the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s chief of staff Dov Weisglass stated his views of the Gaza pullout to the Israeli press. He brashly told Haaretz (emphasis mine), “The significance of our unilateral disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process. It supplies the formaldehyde necessary so there is no political process with Palestinians.” Weisglass continued, “When you freeze the process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state ... Effectively, this whole package called a Palestinian state, with all it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda." The Israeli pullout is to prevent “the establishment of a Palestinian state” and therefore the “peace process.” It is a "formaldehyde" for the corpse of a Palestinian state, a necessary step in Bush's roadmap to peace. Safire may be unaware of Weisglass's statements, but the editorial page of the New York Times (his employer) alluded to them.

William Safire retires at the end of the year. He is a high profile commentator in the nation's – and possibly the world’s - largest “ultra liberal” newspaper. He closes his long running column with a series of screeds justifying the war in Iraq based on a fantasy. He twists the few reality based facts. (Saddam funding suicide bombers and the Gaza pullout aimed at “the prospect of peace in the Holy Land.”) He narrows the scope debate on Iraq to “whether to raise the number of troops” or remain at current levels. He narrows the range of debate by excluding the opinions of people most affected by the “number of troops.” The Arab world is seemingly homogenous and likeminded; the PLO, Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein all have the same goals and are in bed together. Is Safire a world class cynic skilled at disseminating propaganda or simply (other) worldly incompetent? – He reports, you decide.

Take Me to The River

It has been awhile since I posted about poker. This has been by design. Back in the summer I kicked my playing into high gear and consistently won for about 2.5 months playing 20 hours a week. I had big plans to stake up online, buy a house, picket fence, and a baby on the black market. But then I did some “soul searching.” Was poker something I wanted to dedicate my time to? Was it healthy for me to spend large chunks of time with alcoholics and strip club managers? I have lifelong interests in art and education/reading. Both of which would be severely compromised by poker. I came to the decision that art and reading were more important so I would quit logging so many hours a week and only play occasionally. I stopped playing altogether for about 1.5 months. But see, I still had this Funday Sunday progressive jackpot tourney which I was leading.
Quick recap: The tournament is a $65 entry fee. $5 of every entry goes into a progressive jackpot. You get points for placing 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. 5, 3, 2 points respectively. When someone gets to 30 points then they get 50% of the jackpot, 2nd gets 30%, and 3rd gets 20%. The jackpot sits at almost $4K right now. When I stopped playing I was well in the lead with 24 points. Now I am in second because someone has 29.

I have been playing for about 3 weeks. In the previous 3 weeks I finished 8th, 5th, and last week 4th. Last week was a heartbreaker. I lost pocket 8s to pocket 6s. We were all in pre flop and I hit my set on the river only to see him fill a straight. He had two cards that could beat me on the river: the 8s. If he hit a set with his 6s then I would fill a straight. It left me hostile, confused, and paranoid. Lately I had lost several hands where I was a big favorite.

On other development: armed guys in ski masks robbed a local card room recently. Now everybody in the community is as jumpy as a long tail cat in a dog factory and as paranoid as I am. It definitely makes playing more intense; every time someone knocks on the door everyone turns around and looks at the video surveillance screen to see if we are going to get robbed.
In this paranoid -
greed soaked atmosphere, the cards -
fly into the air.

Low stakes poker haiku is great. (See how hard I try for you? Don’t worry; we will have more on the Social Security privatization scam and Iraq quagmire later this week. Those issues are not going anywhere soon.)

Onto last night! First of all, I hit a card rush towards the end of the tournament which I have been long overdue for. Just to recap some big hands I have lost in recently where I was a big favorite: Aces vs. Kings, 8s vs. 6s, and AK vs. AJ. It has been brutal. It is like the gods of poker are trying to punish me for turning my back on them. O ye gods, I did not turn my back on you; you turned your back on me!! I try not to let it affect me, but every time someone calls me I get this feeling like they are going to draw out on me by the river since it has been happening so much lately. It is a Pavlovian response.

I started in the 1 seat last night. Remember, we start with $1000 in chips with the blinds at $25 -$25. Blinds jump every 20 minutes. The first play I made unfolded as follows. Someone raised the pot 4X the blind and another guy called. It got around to me. I figured the original raiser had a small pocket pair. The caller had a suited connector or a crappy ace. He was the kind of player who plays to many hands and any ace. The raiser is pretty solid but he always tries to make really fancy moves. He checks his nut hands to the end to induce bluffs and bets really hard with crappy hands. He calls a bit too much when obviously beat.
Anyway an all in bet could pick up the pot. The $275 out there was worth going after, I pushed it in and they both folded. I started to feel good. In the first two rounds I had to dump a couple baby pocket pairs because people kept blowing the pot up. That gets frustrating, but since the name of the game is Hold’em - I waited.

I looked down at pocket tens. The guy who eventually went on to win it acted right in front of me. (He bartends for a local strip club, has a gambling problem, and speaks in a reedy-strained stoner voice. BTW, who did you hang out with Sunday?) He is hyper aggressive, plays AK way to hard. For example I saw him call a substantial all in bet for all of his chips after a flop with no Ace, King, or any kind of draw in a previous tournament. And yes, he lost the hand. He usually busts out early but if he starts running well his aggression pays off and he can build a mountain of chips. Today would be such a day for him.

Anyway he bet out. I figured there was about an 80% chance I had the best hand. He bet me about half my chips, and I didn’t think that if I pushed in he would fold. I planned on calling his bet and going all in after the flop regardless of what came out thereby only giving him 3 chances to draw out on me instead of 5. The flop came 10 high. Absolutely wonderful. I had about 10 seconds to ponder what I should do to maximize my hand. I hit my set, but there were no apparent draws or anything to keep him around if I bet. I figured if I went all in he would fold… But he bet out into me! I pushed in, he called, and turned over AT. See, that is why I don’t think you gain anything by playing AT. If you get called then you are beat, and if you get raised you are definitely beat. Maybe I am too tight, but I avoid AT and AJ in most circumstances because they just don’t hold any value. If you bet you might pick up a small pot – but any action whatever means they are beat. Say you raise with AJ, the flop comes out with an Ace. You bet out and get reraised. Now what? Assuming the guy also hit an Ace what are the chances they are going to take the lead with a kicker worse than a Jack? Probably not good. It is frustrating to watch other people play AJ and win, but if it is a big pot then more often than not they will lose with it. I stand by my conviction that in a 9 player game AJ is a situational hand at best. (More to come - foreshadowing.)

Anyway, that set of 10s kept me alive. We had about 16 players at that point, down from 22 when we started. I managed to tread water until we got to the final table of 10 by picking up small pots and avoiding showdowns.

At the final table I made my moves. The very first hand I looked down at pocket 9s. I limped and about 4 other people trailed in behind me. The big blind bet out at the pot. I couldn’t call because I wouldn’t have anything left. I couldn’t push because he would call and at best I would be a coin flip. I dumped them.

I noticed the guy on my right played almost any two cards for a hefty raise to the flop if he already posted the blind (loose-passive). He had a mountain of chips and I managed to take some nice chunks by raising him preflop and then raising after the flop. If he didn’t fold then I quit the hand. He folded most times when he missed and it netted me some chips to operate with.

I busted someone with Kings vs A2. I took out someone else with pocket Jacks against their suited connector desperation all in bet. Then the hand which meant the difference between 1st and 3rd for me. The tricky player I mentioned earlier bet out. I had pocket 8s and called. Another player behind me was all in with a call. The flop was something like 966. The tricky player went all in for about $2700. If I called I would have about $1200 left which was dangerously low stack at that stage. I felt like I had him beat but I mucked. It turned out he had 5s. If I had stuck to my instincts and called him I would have had a nice mountain of chips to play with – probably about 8K total. Alas…

Another hand I looked down at AhJh. I limped, and someone in front of me bet pretty hard. Well, remember everything I said about AJ before about it being strictly a situational hand? Here is a situation where I played it. I figured if I pushed all in the guy would call me and I would lose. If an ace came out I would be in a bind because if he had the kind of hand he was representing, AK or AQ, it would be tough to get away from. That is the trick though; I knew I was ready to dump the aces if he came out swinging on an ace flop so I wasn’t really in trouble. The flop was 766 with 2 hearts. I acted first and went all in. I figured the worst case scenario would be that he had an over pair. If that were the case then I could catch a heart or jack to win. He thought hard and mucked AK. That kind of play make me happy! The way I played my hand was like I had a mid size pocket pair and he had to fold when he was stuck with Ace high. If I had pushed all in pre flop then I would have probably lost and looked stupid doing it. Situational hand, AJ, situational.

All was not to end well. Disaster struck in two hands. I had AdQd. I bet out because the caller in front of me was in the pot. Another player called all in as did the calling station. Flop came out Queen high. I had top pair top kicker and bet it. The calling station folded. The side pot was dry. There was about 3K in the pot and I had 3K behind me. We were down to 5 people. There were 22K chips in play. If I won the pot then I would have roughly 1/3 of the chips with 4 people left. If I lost I would have a short stack. The guy had pocket 8s and caught an 8 on the river to sink my battleship. About two hands later he busted out to the calling station.

A few hands later I got 86 in the big blind with not much left and an aggressive blinds/ante structure. The flop came out T87. I had mid pair and runner runner straight potential (don’t laugh.) I raised, got reraised all in, and sadly had to call. C’est la vie.

I got 3rd place which puts me in striking distance for first next week if I win. If there is any reason to the world I will win. Poker, the game where computer programmers, strip club managers, and illegal immigrants come together.

Week Review

Let’s wrap up with a quick review of the week (blog related week). We can expand on some of the themes and topics presented earlier.

Cost of War
Yesterday I gave a “bleeding heart” plea to pay attention to the costs of war beyond casualty counts. Turns out Iraq and Afghanistan vets are already turning up at homeless shelters.

That was the hardest part," Brown said. "Not only were there men, but there were women and children -- really little children. There would be babies with arms blown off. It was something hard to live with.

If anyone noticed, a Ukrainian presidential candidate was poisoned and horribly disfigured by dioxin in an assassination attempt. In case you did not know, Dioxin is also an ingredient in the chemical Agent Orange which we used as a defoliant in Vietnam. Go look up Operation Hades or Operation Ranch Hand to find out the details. We dumped 19 million tons over the Vietnamese countryside. The consequences of that chemical warfare are still being felt; birth defects, cancer, poisonous rivers and streams. To date, no American war planner has been brought up for war crimes for the continued assault on Vietnamese civilians. Chemical Ali, architect of the Kurd gas attack at Hallabja, is starting his war crimes trial. Kissinger is still at large.

Social Security
On Hannity & Colmes tonight (Thursday) Secretary of Treasury John Snow went on the air to discuss the Social Security problem. He stands firmly behind the President’s privatization plan. Once again the dishonesty was appalling and John Snow did little to acquit himself. He trotted out the misleading “bankruptcy” charge several times and pushed privatization as the solution.
The problem restated:
A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report predicts that benefits will exceed revenues in 2019 but the surpluses accumulated pre 2019 will pay the difference until 2052 or 2042 depending on whose prediction you choose to believe. At that time the system will only fund 80% of the predicted outlays.
The Bush solution:
The Bush proposal to solve THAT problem is a privatization system where a small percentage of current payments go into private accounts. The money will invest in the stock market instead of Treasury Bonds. Privatization costs will undercut current benefits and the government is going to borrow money to pay the shortfall. To set up the system we need government infrastructure that does not exist – those costs are also going to be paid by borrowing money. A Presidential Advisory Commission, Republican analysts, and Democratic analysts all agree that the privatization plan will not solve the 2042/2052 shortfall problem and result in a net benefits cut to social security. In short, the Bush solution does solve the stated problem, in fact that is too kind. The solution exaggerates the problem.

They are probably going to ram this through by misleading the public. Last night Fox ran some polls which showed 67% of the people favor privatization, up from 60% in November. It is easy to see why the support has gone up, virtually everyone on Fox says the system will bankrupt in 2042/2052. (Snow actually said “belly up” at one point – remember we are describing a shortfall of 20%. If they rolled back ¼ of the Bush tax cuts, the shortfall would disappear, although Bush says that is not an option.) 1/3 of the people polled did not believe they would ever get social security. The public is grossly misinformed of the problem.

What about the specific costs of privatization? Paul Krugman lays out some numbers and historical wisdom of privatizing social security.

Decades of conservative marketing have convinced Americans that government programs always create bloated bureaucracies, while the private sector is always lean and efficient. But when it comes to retirement security, the opposite is true. More than 99 percent of Social Security's revenues go toward benefits, and less than 1 percent for overhead. In Chile's system, management fees are around 20 times as high. And that's a typical number for privatized systems.

These fees cut sharply into the returns individuals can expect on their accounts. In Britain, which has had a privatized system since the days of Margaret Thatcher, alarm over the large fees charged by some investment companies eventually led government regulators to impose a "charge cap." Even so, fees continue to take a large bite out of British retirement savings.

A reasonable prediction for the real rate of return on personal accounts in the U.S. is 4 percent or less. If we introduce a system with British-level management fees, net returns to workers will be reduced by more than a quarter.

Add in deep cuts in guaranteed benefits and a big increase in risk, and we're looking at a "reform" that hurts everyone except the investment industry.

He goes on to comment on the Chilean system of privatization.

Privatizers who laud the Chilean system never mention that it has yet to deliver on its promise to reduce government spending. More than 20 years after the system was created, the government is still pouring in money. Why? Because, as a Federal Reserve study puts it, the Chilean government must "provide subsidies for workers failing to accumulate enough capital to provide a minimum pension." In other words, privatization would have condemned many retirees to dire poverty, and the government stepped back in to save them.

The same thing is happening in Britain. Its Pensions Commission warns that those who think Mrs. Thatcher's privatization solved the pension problem are living in a "fool's paradise." A lot of additional government spending will be required to avoid the return of widespread poverty among the elderly - a problem that Britain, like the U.S., thought it had solved.

Britain's experience is directly relevant to the Bush administration's plans. If current hints are an indication, the final plan will probably claim to save money in the future by reducing guaranteed Social Security benefits. These savings will be an illusion: 20 years from now, an American version of Britain's commission will warn that big additional government spending is needed to avert a looming surge in poverty among retirees.

It is amazing what propaganda does to the public mind. One of the points James made in the email I posted earlier was that he didn’t want the government to have more bureaucracy and power than it already does. Privatization would create more government bureaucracy, not lessen it.

Corporate Power
One other topic I briefly touched on was the current assault on Congressional Power. State’s rights conservatives argue that the government is too big and encroaches on our freedoms. Therefore we need to break down the power of the federal government and get it back into the States. While there are plenty of problems with the government, states rights conservatives ignore one critical factor: corporate power. There is a long and violent history in our country for labor rights. The thread starts before the break from England and runs right up until today. Even though the government usually serves the interests of the elites (since that is who primarily occupies government office – see “Tauzin” for a recent example) they have provided protection for working class people.

To briefly survey this struggle, see Shays Rebellion, Abolition, The Haymarket Riot, The Ludlow massacre, and the Wagner Act (1935). The struggle has been bloody with many set backs, but it has made progress. The Reagan years ushered in a renewed effort to roll back labor rights. Almost immediately they signaled that The Wagner Act and OSHA regulations would not be enforced when Reagan broke the air traffic controllers strike and under cut funding for federal labor rights watch groups. This started a trend that continues today. In 1991 Caterpillar broke a strike using illegal strike busting tactics that the International Labor Organization condemned. The US at that point was racing Thatcher’s England to see who could have the worst labor rights in the industrialized world. During the 1980s the US started with the highest labor costs in the industrialized world which would be expected from the richest country. By the mid 1990s they had the lowest despite soaring corporate profits. Clinton’s NAFTA program was extremely harmful, encouraging manufacturers to move to Mexico.

Adam Cohen remarks that currently “states’ rights conservatives” are urging the Supreme Court to overturn Wickard v. Filburn which “expanded Congress’s power to legislate in the public interest.” If this is overturned then Congress can no longer set minimum wages, national tax regulations, environmental regulations, and other laws that protect people from corporations. In this landmark decision the Court interpreted the Constitutional commerce clause to broaden Congressional power. The working class needs federal protection.

Recently several corporations, A&P, J. P. Morgan Chase, Pep Boys, Ryan's Family Steakhouses, TGF Precision HairCutters, and the Regis Corporation, were prosecuted by the Labor department for forcing workers to work off the clock. Some people put in 40 hours a week off the clock effectively halving their minimum wage. When some workers spoke up they were fired.

In a story on how to (illegally) break up a union, the EnerSys battery corporation closed a 500 person plant after an unsuccessful campaign to destroy the worker union. They hired a consultant refered to “as Mr. X” who wrote “fliers that called the union’s leaders names like ‘trailer trash’, ‘Uncle Tom’, and ‘dog woman.’” In a lawsuit “federal officials accused it of 120 labor law violations in its seven-year effort to eliminate the union.” This is not an uncommon practice, “The litigation also highlights a little known but thriving business in which law firms and consultants work with corporations to beat back unionization efforts. Jackson Lewis, a national law firm based in New York, describes itself as ‘committed to the practice of preventive labor relations.’”

Federal organizations are the only organizations powerful enough to fight these abuses. If the states had all the power then even small corporations could whipsaw labor markets by finding another state willing to overlook their abuses and provide the softest tax system. Currently only really big corporations can move offshore to drive down labor costs and defy federal regulations. The history of labor rights is bloody and violent. It is not one we should return to.

The Media Lapdogs

I watched Hannity & Colmes last night. (I have a masochistic addiction to Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilley. I am drawn to those two like a masochist to … well… pain.)

They were discussing the Medals of Freedom Bush recently gave George Tenet, Paul Bremer, and posthumously to Anastasio Somoza. The guest on the show, some cog in the Democratic Party, was incredulous that Bush awarded these medals for their service in Iraq given how disastrous the campaign has been. The CIA is currently debating whether or not the situation is A. Civil War or B. Sustained Insurgency. (I am not sure what the distinction is. It sort of reminds me of that old Referee Pittman show on Saturday Night Live when someone would ask Chris Farley’s referee character if he had human or dog excrement in place of his soul.)

Hannity jumped all over the guy, yelled over him, cut him off, etc. His counter attack was centered on 3 key points:
1.“We have never come so far, so fast, with so few casualties” in liberating 50 million people.
2.Liberals still don’t get it. The American people can see for themselves that the war is going fine and support the president.
3.Yelling over the top of his guest so he couldn’t get any words in.

It is sad, Hannity & Colmes is a “debate” show on a “news” channel. Hannity believes we have "liberated" 50 million people, although one wonders if his opinion would change if he lived in Iraq. We know what Iraqi opinion is, the overwhelming majority view coalition forces as an occupying rather than liberating force and the trend has been moving to occupying. Hannity has the standard jingoist views, we removed this brutal dictator and gave them a chance for liberty and all of that.

What Hannity ignores, and he is able to do this from the Fox News studio, is what removing Saddam resulted in. The points that we all agree on is that Saddam was a bastard who had no regard for human life. His atrocities are well documented (along with our help in those atrocities) over the last 20 years. However, any humanitarian intervention requires a very careful calculation which Hannity ignores. For example the Iraqi war has caused 400,000 children to suffer from acute malnutrition. That means protein deficiencies, diarrhea, and distended bellies. The number of dead civilians is unknown although the only scientifically reviewed study to date places the number at around 100,000. Other sources make very conservative estimates of about 16,000 – 40,000. (The number of dead Americans sits at 1300.)

What does not get as much coverage is the number of physically wounded. The number of wounded sits far higher than the number killed. The number of people who have to live with disabilities or disfiguration far outnumbers the dead. Traditional estimates of wounded vs. dead ratios are 10 to 1. It may be lower in Iraq because of the dreadful medical facilities available. The point is nobody knows, but the number is very high.

The number of people who are mentally scarred is probably even higher still. There are no known figures for affected Iraqis who we are “liberating”, but we do have figures on American soldiers. Experts are expecting 100,000 returning soldiers to suffer from stress disorders. The mental side effects of exposure to combat include violence, psychosis, depression, insomnia, flashbacks. Returning soldiers suffer from suicide rates that are far higher than any other segment of the population. They are prone to abusing their spouses or children.

Imagine the psychological effects the war will have on the civilians who evacuated Fallujah. Currently most of them are living in squalid refugee camps. But when they return they will find a heap of rubble with pockets of violence. Looting, gun fire, kidnappings, car bombings, and other acts of violence occur on the streets of almost every major city. There is no way to gauge the effects this will have on the survivors. If American troops suffer psychological casualties then so do Iraqis.

The question anyone must ask about a “humanitarian intervention” is whether the scope of atrocity is greater than the consequences of the use of force. (In a functioning democracy this would be debated in the public before going to war.) Clinton led a NATO action against Slobodan Milosevic to prevent “ethnic cleansing.” Before the bombing Clinton and others claimed that Milosevic had killed hundreds of thousands of people. Currently Milosevic is on trial and is charged with several hundred deaths – not several hundred thousand, several hundred. There has been no evidence that he killed thousands of people before the NATO action. The international court accepts that the bulk of deaths came after and because of the NATO bombing as predicted by NATO commanders such as Wesley Clark. As a result of the bombing the scale and scope of ethnic violence exponentially increased.

In the case of Kosovo, Clinton exaggerated the scope of atrocity to justify the use of force. One difference between Iraq and Kosovo is that Iraq started was an act of self defense. Although he may not remember, in the run up to the war Hannity and others were only concerned with disarming Iraq. Hannity does not appear to understand the question of scope, he doesn’t even acknowledge it. Hence he is indignant over any objection to the official stance on the war that it is going well and repeats the “so far so fast - 50 million liberated” lines over anyone who voices objection.

It is scary to watch him. He is completely subordinate to power. Apparatchiks working for Pravda would have been challenged to match his chauvinistic enthusiasm. They closed their “debate” show with a look at the new puppy in the white house. It included a dog’s eye view of the dog frolicking through the house and Bush aide’s talking to one of the dogs. Hannity & Colmes “debated” whether it was a “liberal” or “conservative” dog.

Antisocial Security

Today the NYT ran a story confirming one of my points about Bush's privatization plan. The proposed privatized plan does not solve the projected shortfalls and is likely to cut benefits even more because of the spending required to "reform" the system. (emphasis mine)

Nearly every leading Republican proposal on Capitol Hill acknowledges that private accounts by themselves do little to solve the system's projected shortfall of at least $3.5 trillion. Instead, those proposals rely on deep cuts in benefits to future retirees.

That uncomfortable political truth was driven home on Monday by the head of the investigative arm of Congress.

"The creation of private accounts for Social Security will not deal with the solvency and sustainability of the Social Security fund," that official, David M. Walker, comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office, said in a speech on Monday.

Or, as Thomas Saving, a Republican-appointed trustee to the Social Security trust fund put it last week: "Fundamentally, if you don't reduce the benefits, you don't reduce the debt."

Some of the Republican proposals would raise the age when people can start to receive benefits. Others would reduce payments to beneficiaries to account for longer life expectancies. Still others would reduce payments to married couples and scale back the annual increases that are made to keep pace with inflation.

But the biggest single idea is included in the plan the White House most often points to, abandoning the practice of setting benefits as a share of people's pre-retirement earnings.

Analysts affiliated with both political parties say that that one change could save more than $10 trillion over the next 75 years, more than enough to wipe out Social Security's projected shortfall. People retiring today or even in the next 10 years would feel almost no impact.

Republicans and Democrats agree on several key points. The Bush plan will not solve - but expand the problem and there are other viable solutions. The Republicans want to eliminate social security as a reflection of income. That would wipe out the shortfall. Democrats want to shift the retirement age from 65 to 67 and remove the ceiling on payroll tax which kicks in at $87,900.

The article mentions another interesting fact, "Mr. Bush's own advisory commission in 2001 made it clear that personal accounts would make little dent in the underlying shortfall."

Bush is trying to ram through the private account plan by whipping up fear about the loss of social security. If you look at what is going on and who stands to gain the most you can see what is happening. The biggest advocates for the plan are Wall Street investment firms. Private accounts would immediately give Wall Street billions of dollars. It is in effect a regressive tax plan meant to subsidize corporations at the expense of social security (since the plan is likely going to cut future benefits.)

Ok, well here was James response to my original post. (emphasis mine)

Although I couldn't help but to feel cheated and betrayed after I read it. I couldn't believe the horror before my eyes. I mean how could they? Those conservative bastards!!!! How dare they assume that Americans are responsible enough to manage their own money instead of forcing them to give it to the already-bloated bureaucracy to maybe or maybe not dole out as an allowance later??? Damn you George Bush!!! Damn you all to hell!!

MY SERIOUS, QUICK THOUGHTS:
1) If you die before you collect your social security, you get $0 of the thousands that you have deposited. Someone else will get your money. If you were privately investing it, your benefactors get to inherit all of it should you die prematurely.
2) Social Security gives you a miniscule amount of interest on your money, whereas private investments have the opportunity to vastly increase the return on your money so you could live better than you would under social security.
3) As a conservative, I believe that the federal govt. is already way too big and powerful--doing bureaucratic tasks that the founding fathers never intended to be done at that level--and I want to give them as little of my money as I have to and force them to spend less.
4) Calling the Bush administration blatant liars for saying social security is in jeopardy is absurd and wrong. Where did I get the idea that since the average life expectancy is growing in America and for various other reasons, social security is slowly running out?

First of all, I called the Bush Administration "blatant liars" because they are trying to ram through a privatized program which only exacerbates the problems they are supposed to solve. The privatized plan will not fix the problems as virtually every analyst agrees. That is not "absurd and wrong"- it is honesty.

My previous analysis of the plan was strictly economically. I didn't consider the social implications reflected in James' remarks. Social Security (and other programs from the New Deal) reflect a social contract. The Social Contract is an agreement to establish a sort of basic security net for the elderly. The people who have worked - and contributed to - society there whole lives should not be left to the wolves when they grow too old to work anymore. That is what it is about. The attitude underlying these attacks are antisocial. Why should we care if some old guy gets his social security check? Why am I paying for his benefits? James: "If you die before you collect your social security, you get $0 of the thousands that you have deposited. Someone else will get your money."

The current assault on Social Security is an attack on social institutions. It is a reflection of anti-social and selfish outlook, an attack on social institutions established by the New Deal. In an op-ed Adam Cohen remarks on a challenge to the Supreme Court on Wickard v. Filburn. Wickard v. Filburn established the Congressional power via the Commerce Clause to enforce national business regulations. It greatly enhanced Congressional power. One aspect of this enhanced power is the ability for Congress to pass protective legislation for workers. This is why they can force us to pay for national programs like social security, regulate workers rights, regulate pollution, minimum wage standards, etc. So called "states rights conservatives" are appealing the case.

The standard line, which James echoes above, is that the government is too big and powerful. We have to smash down the federal government so people are not so oppressed. The standard line is an elitist one for a very simple reason. The federal government is powerful enough to stand up to large corporations while state governments are not. Right now only really large corporations can really tangle with the government and labor force. If a big manufacturing company can't get its way it can rebuild in Mexico. But without federal protection even small firms can threaten workers because they don't have to move out of country. They can move to another state that offers them cheaper labor or a more favorable local tax system. The programs from the New Deal arose out of a violent and oppressive labor history, one which we should not return to.

Social Security Roulette

The Bush Administration is pushing to privatize Social Security. Currently 6% of everyone’s wages go into the Social Security system. The government invests them in government Treasury bonds to pay current beneficiaries. The Bush plan calls for 2% of the 6% to go into private accounts that individual workers “manage.”

Why change the current system? The revenues from social security taxes will soon be exceeded by benefits paid to retirees. If nothing is done to fix the problem, then when the social security trust fund is depleted in 2052 the system will only be able to pay around 80% of promised benefits. Any proposed solutions need to address the expected shortfalls and ensure that 100% of benefits can be paid.

The administration’s claims the system will go “bankrupt” in the year 2052. This is an outright lie, but few in the media are calling the Administration out on it. A notable exception is Nobel economist Paul Krugman. He points out that the current plan will work until 2052; at that point the current system will only fund 80% of the benefits. The shortfall could be made up by a slightly progressive tax amounting to ¼ of the Bush tax cuts. So to recap, the current Social Security will be fine until 2052, at which point it will have a 20% shortfall that could be made up with a tax increase amounting to ¼ of the Bush tax cuts. That is “bankruptcy.”

So to prevent “bankruptcy” they are counting on the stock market to return yields significantly higher than government Treasury bonds. That is a gamble which could prove disastrous. There are also costs to shift funds into private accounts. The reallocation creates an immediate shortfall of several billion dollars for current beneficiaries. There are also startup costs for setting up the accounts. The plan to pay for these costs and shortfalls is to go deeper into debt with the hope that future returns will pay for it. That makes no sense because the return on private accounts are not likely to outpace the interest on the new loans, pay back the loans themselves, fund the startup costs, and solve the “bankruptcy” due in 2042.

The net effect will be a regressive tax structure. Either the start up costs, loans, and interest on loans will be drawn from future social security funds, thereby cutting future benefits, or from new taxes in the form of subsidy cuts on other social programs. The justification for overhauling the system is obviously fraudulent, and surely Bush and his economists understand that. The 2052 “bankruptcy” is obviously not a “bankruptcy”, but a projected 20% shortfall. The proposed solution does not solve the shortfall. It is a dice throw on the 2052 stock market.

With all of these questions, it is rational to wonder if something else is going on. For one thing a group that stands to gain enormously from privatization is investment firms and Wall Street brokers. They are going to get billions of dollars for investing. Whichever corporations the investment firms put our money into are going to get a big shot in the arm. Given that the privatization plan is likely to cost us retirement benefits this is in effect a highly regressive tax plan. The net effect will be a billion dollar public subsidy program for private corporations at the expense of social programs.

Quick Sunday Update...

One fateful night a few months ago at Monkey's apartment, Keith ended up screaming at everyone. Later Jarrod tried to make a drunken point about the merits of our system and capitalism compared to communism. It was an incoherent mess. I didn't bother with the point, but pointed out how far from capitalism we are.

The free market has very little to do with our system. The public underwrites the research and development of the technology industry through The Pentagon. Sometimes as a result of the military technology we get useful social products like cell phones, lasers, computers, etc. This is the military industrial complex. The public also underwrites the research and development of pharmaceuticals in the form of government subsidies to medical companies. If anything useful comes out of the research then large pharm corporations are allowed to patent and sell the drugs back for large profits. The government protects corporations from domestic and foreign markets. These come in the form of anti trust laws, tax subsidies, and tariffs on foreign imports. Supply and demand have very little to do with the system.

Last term the WTO and international community harshly criticized Bush for his illegal protective tariffs for foreign steel. His reasoning was that he had to protect the American steel industry from foreign companies until they could catch up. This is an illegal practice in the world market. It didn’t matter though; the United States is powerful enough to violate trade rules. And Bush was probably quite right; if he didn’t protect them from foreign steel companies then they may have been in serious danger. One thing to consider is what happens to countries who are not powerful enough to violate the law without impunity.

Typically what happens when a weak nation tries to protect their domestic markets from foreign corporations the World Bank stop sending aid and loans which just decimates their economies. They are forced to allow foreign corporations entry in the name of "free trade." So that is one example of how little capitalism has to do with the system. In a capitalist system foreign steel companies would have filled the demand more aptly than American steel companies and would have won.

One more quick example (it is Sunday.) Today in the NYT magazine that comes with every Sunday paper, there is a list of 100 important ideas from last year. Some of them are sort of meaningless, psychopathic screening tests for C.E.O.’s. (Obviously Ken Lay and other C.E.O.’s who are corrupt and lie to maximize stock values are demented psychopaths.) On the same page are purple pens for grading student papers. The purple is kinder than red. Trivial stuff.

But there are some other interesting ideas which give you an idea of how "the markets" work in the US. One is called a BLEEX; it is an exoskeleton that can make a 70 pound load feel like 5 pounds. The BLEEX is a robotic exoskeleton that fits on your legs invented by a professor from Berkeley. The article mentions The Pentagon “has financed much of Kazerooni’s (the professor) research – says it wants the machine to literally ease the burden on American troops.” The researcher adds that someday a modified version of the BLEEX will help the elderly move around.

This is a good example of how the “free market” works. The Pentagon paid for the research – which really means the American public subsidized it. But the inventor works at a University. Well Universities are also heavily subsidized by the public, so Karerooni salary is paid by the public. He invented it for the military with a nod towards the future when it will have social uses. Anyone should be able to see how far this is from capitalism and "supply - demand". At some later date the public will buy the BLEEX for Grandma and Grandpa. They are buying back a modified military invention they funded from an inventor whom they employ. That is supply and demand. The example generalizes.

Sunnyside Up

Someone sent the following article to me today. Go read it. No really, go on. I will still be here, promise. *waiting*

Ok, so you are back. The article probably does not merit comment; however I wrote a piece the other day lightly canvassing the mindsets of people who offer their service as apparatchiks. This is an extension of that line of thought. Refuting some of the factual claims and exposing the arrogant and imperial logic is secondary to exposing the mindset of people who not only write this stuff, but actually believe it.

Andrew Sullivan notes that “the case for despair” is weakening. Right there he tells you where he is coming from: the discussion of Iraq is a legal argument. On one hand you have the optimists parading the good news to prove they were correct, on the other you have the “nattering nabobs of negativism” seeking to make their “case for despair.” It is a debate society with each side seeking to score points for their “case.” This is an admittedly nitpicky attack on the choice of words, but it does reveal the mindset of their author.

No one should make their case by warping reality to fit their preconceived notions. The facts speak for themselves. Sullivan calls to attention “an even less-noticed development this past month: the relative silence across Iraq after the devastating coalition assault on Falluja.” He concedes the campaign killed thousands of people including an unknown quantity of civilians. The city which once had over 250,000 residents is a pile of smoldering rubble and the fighting continues.

Most of the residents fled the city before the assault. They are now a permanent refugee population living in squalor and no homes to return too. To Sullivan they are “relatively silent.” Furthermore, as the US military has conceded, a “relative silence” did not befall the rest of Iraq. Insurgents increased their attacks in other cities where US troops had vacated to invade Fallujah. Police stations were burned and looted. Sullivan’s “relative” silence is imaginary. November was the bloodiest month of the war for U.S. troops.

Sullivan draws a line from the US Empire directly to the British and Roman imperial empires. He remarks that “the coalition has learned a critical tactic in neo-imperial governance: divide and rule.” However this is not a new tactic, the “neo-imperial” rulers are taking a page from Romans and Brits since “it has long been a useful strategy” as evidenced in colonial America, India, Africa, and countless other places where the British “reserved the right to bomb the niggers” as Lloyd George put it.

The question of who the “strategy” has largely been useful to is not one that needs to be answered by Sullivan, although if we could ask them, the “niggers” would probably object to “divide and rule” strategies. “Divide and rule” strategies were the basis of South African apartheid, Colonial Slavery, Native American genocide, and most recently Israel’s wall which was condemned internationally – including by the US. The president threatened to cut Israeli funding if they did not stop construction, but never carried through. Later the US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution ordering Israel to cease construction. The “divide and rule” strategy endures.

Sullivan admits that pummeling Fallujah was “a potentially dangerous ploy” that could “lead to civil war.” But only a pessimist would fail to see the good news, in a recent survey “a full two-thirds … said the prospect of civil war was ‘not realistic’.” Put another way, 1/3 of Iraqis believe civil war is a realistic prospect, and that is good news. What one wonders, qualifies as bad news?

In another inverted point of view Sullivan cites the ever increasing escalation of US troop levels as a sign that there is a “sliver of democratic momentum.” “Democratic momentum” is directly proportional to the size of an occupying military for the properly trained mind. One of the President’s aides told Ron Suskind who inquired about empiricism and factual analysis, “That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” In this self made reality the bloody imperial history of Rome and Brittan and their “divide and rule” strategies are to be followed and lauded.