Dear Patriotic Global Citizens and Friends of Ethiopia:
Imagine a Diaspora Economics Professor who wants to run urban terrorism in Addis to promote the Global Toxic Assets in Africa?
How does the Global Economic toxic assets and Economic terrorists related?
Simple, those Economists and Fiscal bandits who accumulated toxic assets disrupted the Global Economy worse than an urban terrorist can do as they polluted all assets at the heads of financial institutions in New York, London, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, etc.
What about this Pen Country side Visiting International terrorist posing as an economist doing, by literraly claiming that the alleged terrorists were heroes on a weekend Ethiopian language Addis Radio yesterday at 1390 AM.
It is so funny, that the alleged Visiting Prof wants to advise President Barack Obama how to terrorize Ethiopian people. This guy is funny. We need to encourage Home land Security and CIA operates to attend to the Gunibot 7 Meeting on May 3 2009 that is posted at www.guinbot7.org web site.
Let President Obama get first hand intelligence at this meeting where they will be plotting the new urban terror wave for the 2010 elections.
It is amazing how education does not change the urban terrors, the hobby of delinquent youths in Merkato terra in Addis in the late 1970s. You can say this boys were young around 17 and 18, now at 55 the foolish Professor wants to be delinquent again.
What a shame? President Obama showed the world how to make Change possible via the ballot box and digital community organizing. Can Professor Bonger learn a lesson or two. Just sitting in the hills of Pennsylvania and shouting the 1777 Revolution is not enough. President Obama has shown us modern day interactive civil change!
May be we should re-educate fools like Prof Bonger to go back to the school of democracy and not promote terror in Africa from the hills of Pennsylvania.
Let Home Land Security and CIA attend the May 3 2009 meeting and judge for theselves if they see any modicum of democracy being advocated in these meetings. I challenge all intelligent people to review www.gunibot7.org and show us how democracy is being promoted by advocating violence and choas in Merkato terra?
The reports are clear that the 35 will be brought to court and the Court of Justice will investigate their case. How about investingaging www.guinbot7.org for its content, plan and advocacy of terror in the Horn.
We need to have transparency and accountability in all our communications and our activities, and I ask interested parties to examine carefully the contents of www.guinbot7.org and how it is going to change the African landscape towards democracy or anarchy.
The following report demands some careful investiation and I put forward the news as a starting point.
May Good will, transparency and accountability prevail!
Dr B
Imagine Guinbot 7 promoting Ethiopian Coffee rather than Alqaeda type terror in the Horn
We need to examine the financial and technical support that Guinbot7 has generated for terror in the horn under the misguided notion of totalitarin democractic centralism that it advocates!
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BERHANU_PROFILE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-04-25-18-32-46
AP
April 25, 2009
Pa. prof denies leading alleged Ethiopia coup plot
MARK SCOLFORO
LEWISBURG, Pa. -- An economics professor at a Pennsylvania university said Saturday he supports efforts to spread democracy in his native Ethiopia, but denied backing an alleged coup attempt there that led to the arrests of 35 people by the government.
"I'm very suspicious that there was an attempt at all," said Berhanu Nega during an interview at his home outside of Lewisburg in north-central Pennsylvania. "This is not a government that has any credibility whatsoever in terms of telling the truth."
He said he did not know who may have been arrested, and said it could have easily been some sort of overreaction.
"The government, every time, it panics," he said. "It's always treason, always acting against the government."
Berhanu, 51, said he came to the U.S. as a young man in 1980, is married to an American citizen and has two sons. He is an associate professor of economics at nearby Bucknell University, a private liberal-arts school that enrolls about 3,400 undergraduates.
He previously taught at the university from 1990 until 1994, when he returned to Ethiopia to work at Addis Ababa University, according to a profile on the university's Web site.
In 2005, he became the country's first elected mayor when he won the mayoral race in Addis Ababa, the nation's capital. But post-election violence over the election results led the Ethiopian government to shoot 193 protesters and to later jail Berhanu, other opposition leaders and thousands of supporters. Berhanu said the party was not responsible for the violent demonstrations.
The opposition leaders stood trial for nearly two years on charges of challenging the constitutional order - the charge was lessened from treason. The main clique of 38 opposition leaders pleaded guilty and were pardoned in 2007 after appealing to the government.
Berhanu and several other party leaders then left for the U.S., returning to the country in August 2007. He rejoined Bucknell as a visiting international scholar in economics in Spring 2008.
"It became very clear immediately after our release that they will not at all tolerate any opposition, meaningful opposition," he said.
Berhanu also urged President Obama's administration to "carefully revisit its policy toward Ethiopia."
"It is just unseemly for any democratic government such as the United States to have any relationship with it," he said.
______________________________________________________________________
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-04-26-voa1.cfm?rss=topstories
VOA
April 26, 2009
Ethiopia Arrests 35 Suspects In Alleged Coup Plot
Peter Heinlein
Ethiopian authorities have arrested 35 people suspected of involvement in a plot to overthrow the government. Those arrested are said to be followers of an exiled opposition leader living in the United States.
Government spokesman Ermias Legesse says the 35 arrested included two groups, one comprising soldiers and another that included civilian government employees and others. He tells VOA police found weapons and other incriminating evidence when they raided the homes of suspects. "We have got information from different people and we investigate it, and we have gone to the court and the court gave us an allowance to go to their home and we have checked their home and we have arrested 35 people and in their home we have got so many weapons, landmines, soldier uniforms, and their future plan what they want to do," he said.
Ethiopia has arrested 35 people suspected of a coup attempt allegedly backed by Dr. Berhanu Nega, an Ethiopian economist now living in the United States
All those arrested are said to be members of a group called "Ginbot 7," or "May 15th", which is the date of Ethiopia's disputed 2005 election. Ginbot 7 is led by Berhanu Nega, who was elected mayor of Addis Ababa in the 2005 election. But he never took office.
He was jailed and convicted of treason along with more than 100 other opposition leaders in connection with violent post-election demonstrations in which nearly 200 protestors were killed. He and the others spent 20 months in prison before being pardoned.
After his release, Berhanu went to the United States, where he is currently a professor of economics at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. A page on the university Web site says he has urged the United States and other western nations to back democratic movements in Ethiopia and other African countries by withdrawing support for dictators.
Opposition Web sites such as "Ginbot 7' are blocked in Ethiopia. Berhanu has in the past accused Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of creating a one-party state.
In a telephone interview, government spokesman Ermias described Ginbot 7 as an illegal organization. "It's not registered as a legal party, and not recognized by the government. It is an illegal party. The groups and the party, who are an illegal party, we call it Ginbot 7. That's our issue," he said.
Ermias declined to say what charges would be filed against those arrested, saying that would be up to the Justice Ministry. He also declined to identify any of the suspects. He said they would all be brought before a judge within a few days.
The arrests come as Ethiopia is beginning preparations for its next parliamentary election in May, 2010. With a little more than a year until election day, most political observers consider the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front an overwhelming favorite to sweep the polls.
Party officials have said one of their top priorities will be preventing the kind of violence that marred the 2005 vote.
In local and bi-elections elections last April, opposition candidates won only three of approximately 3.6 million seats being contested. The annual U.S. State Department human rights report was highly skeptical about whether the results accurately reflected the will of the Ethiopian people.
__________________________________________________________________
http://en.ethiopianreporter.com/content/view/988/1/
Reporter, Ethiopia
April 25, 2009
Momentum for change in coffee marketing
Ed.’s Note: This piece of writing is extracted from the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) discussion note which was prepared in December 2008.
The birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia is home to some of the finest coffees in the world. Ethiopia is currently the top African exporter and is ranked sixth in the global market. With an annual production of 225,000 tons and an export sector valued at $525 million, coffee generates 60 percent of Ethiopia’s foreign exchange earnings and provides livelihoods for 15 million Ethiopian smallholder farmers.
The coffee economy employs several hundred thousand in processing of either red cherry (key eshet) or dried pulp coffee (jenfel) in hundreds of washing stations and hulling mills around the country. This results in “supply coffee,” which is then inspected and transported and marketed by several thousand of akrabis or suppliers to the venerable exporters, who have long established trade ties with buyers in Europe, Japan, and the Americas. The coffee undergoes further export processing, polishing, cleaning, and sorting, before loading to the port. As important as coffee is to the economy, it is also consumed in large quantities at home, leaving no doubt that coffee is a way of life in Ethiopia.
Coffee marketing in Ethiopia has undergone several transformations over the decades. Recent initiatives to increase value and to benefit the coffee sector include Fair Trade certification by cooperatives, organic and specialty coffee promotion, and the trade marking and licensing initiative that has successfully established international branding of three of Ethiopia’s major coffee types: Sidamo, Yirgachefe, and Harar.
In July 2008, a new law (Proclamation 702/2008) and the supporting Regulation issued by the Council of Ministers replaced the existing coffee quality control and marketing legislation governing the sector for the past nearly four decades, effectively legislating that all supply coffees, with the exception of grower direct exports, are to be traded in the newly established Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX). This move is as bold and as fundamental a transformation as the opening of the Coffee Auction was to the sector in 1972, prior to which gentlemen coffee traders would swap samples of coffee in handkerchiefs prior to striking a deal. The present innovation to coffee trading in ECX, in a similar spirit of continuous improvement and achievement, launches a new era for Ethiopian coffee.
However, the new legislation does not explicitly address or provide specific treatment for a small but important share of export coffee denoted as “specialty coffee,” which may also include organic coffee for the purposes of this Note. As niche market coffee, specialty coffee can be considered a high end, high value product, relative to bulk or commodity coffee. Some argue that Ethiopia is a unique case as regards specialty coffees, the emphasis on which has recently emerged as an important market trend.
What makes Ethiopia special in the specialty coffee world is that, as the original home of coffee, Arabica coffee has grown in the south-western highlands of Ethiopia for thousands of year. Over this time, an incredible genetic diversity of coffee varieties has evolved as a combination of natural advantages in the country’s ecosystem: altitude, ample rainfall, optimum temperatures, and volcanic fertile soils. Thus, Ethiopia is home to some two thousand indigenous strains or cultivars of coffee and the research system has introduced at present 24 formal varieties of Arabica coffee. This is unique relative to other coffee producer countries where the coffee plant was introduced much later with much less genetic variety.
Second, the way in which coffee is cultivated in Ethiopia is also significant in understanding both the nature of coffee as well as the coffee market structure. Ethiopian coffee is cultivated in four distinct production systems. Forest Coffee is self-sown and naturally grown wild under full forest coverage mainly in south-western Ethiopia, and represents a tenth of total production. Semi-forest Coffee, also grown under forest canopy in the same region has limited human intervention, represents a third of total production.
Garden Coffee refers to the bulk of Ethiopian coffee (more than 50 percent), grown by smallholder farmers inter-cropped with cereals, fruits, and vegetables, mainly in the southern and eastern regions. Finally, Plantation Coffee is grown on large state-owned or commercial farms, representing 5 percent. This cultivation system combined with the genetic wealth results in a diversity of coffees produced for market, with the potential to qualify as specialty coffees, by millions of small scale producers. In contrast, coffee in other producer countries is mainly plantation or estate cultivated, with fewer varieties, and thus more homogenous.
Against this backdrop, the objective of this discussion note is to examine the implications of the recent legislation to trade all coffees in the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (with the exception of grower direct exports) for the marketing of specialty coffees. For the purposes of discussion, we include the whole basket of “niche” coffees as specialty coffee, including wild forest coffee, shade grown, bird-friendly, mountain, and organic coffees in addition to specific geographic appellations.
We begin by highlighting the background and justification for introducing coffee trading into the recently established Ethiopia Commodity Exchange in the next section. From there, we focus on specialty coffee, starting with definitions and perspectives on its certification. From there we proceed to a discussion of the relative importance of specialty coffee in the Ethiopian coffee industry and an analysis of possible implications for specialty coffee in the context of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange.
Coffee as commodity has been traded for more than for more than 1500 years and Ethiopia is the oldest coffee exporter in the world. For centuries, Ethiopian merchants transported coffee in caravans of mules, camels, and donkeys. In the late nineteenth century, coffee had become one of Ethiopia's more important cash crops, even exported to far destinations such as London, Marseilles, New York, and Trieste. Trade then flowed along two major trade routes, either north to Massawa port via Gondar and Adwa or east along the Awash River valley to Harar and then on to Berbera or Zeila ports, although prior to 1920, Ethiopia still consumed the bulk of the coffees it produced. As the export of coffee picked up, in the 1940s and 50s, a common practice was for brokers to circulate samples of various coffees in their handkerchiefs to show to the few exporting houses.
With limited information, coffee trading was costly and highly arbitrary, with farmers and local suppliers often at the mercy of the brokers. By 1957, as production and exports grew, the Imperial regime established the National Coffee Board to regulate coffee marketing and quality control. In this era, a system of strict quality control from the production area to the export channel was established.
However, the Auctions in Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa did not emerge for another sixteen years until 1972, at the request of both suppliers and exporters equally concerned by the need for an improved trading system that would be managed, at their request, by the State as a neutral third party. The coffee auctions were established as a Dutch type ascending price bidding system, hosting the two sides of the market, the akrabis (or suppliers) and the exporters, with trading on the basis of sample and bidding lot by lot. In this system, all coffees are brought to Addis Ababa, with the exception of Harar type coffee, which is brought to Dire Dawa. At the central market, it is inspected and graded and sold on a sample basis, with payment upon delivery to the exporter. This system, although going through some modification, survived nearly intact over three regimes, nearly four decades, and numerous regulatory and policy changes to the sector, up to the present.
However, over the past decade, there has been mounting policy concern with the existing coffee trading system and several factors contributing to the impetus for a transformation of the trading system to a commodity exchange model. The first concern is with increasingly noncompetitive practices related to vertical integration of the coffee supply chain. Exporters engage in direct contracting with suppliers as a means to ensure supply and reduce their risk exposure when they sell forward in international market. In addition, vertical integration gives them the traceability advantage which is available to cooperatives. This vertical integration in turn undermines the price discovery that is central to the auction system, distorting price signals to the market participants. An export firm may bid on its own supply coffee at a much higher price to discourage others from buying it, leading to false price signals in the market (IFPRI, 2003).
The second concern relates to quality and quality dispute resolution. As Ethiopian coffee is produced in small quantities by many small farmers, quality is difficult to manage and significant quality losses occur at various stages. In production, Ethiopian coffee is susceptible to Coffee Berry Disease (CBD) which requires good cultivation practices and additional production investment to circumvent. Quality losses also occur in poor post-harvest on-farm processing, including weak storage infrastructure and contamination with other products. Further quality losses also occur in the dry or wet-processing stage. There are approximately 637 washing stations and 480 sun dried coffee processing plants. At the terminal market, grading is based on origin and there are 6 grades used with each origin, which are known in the international market. As can be seen from the table below, the bulk of Ethiopian coffee exports are low grade coffee, 3rd quality or 4th quality.
Quality is also eroded during the marketing phase by adulteration of coffee origins as well as improper bagging and storage practices. For this reason, Ethiopia’s export coffee does not have deliverable grade status on the international coffee market (New York), which requires maintenance of a consistent and relatively high quality set of coffees which would be priced with a constant differential to the New York price. Thus, despite its status as a relatively important producer country, Ethiopia is unique in not having acquired this status, in contrast to most producing countries.
Further, the existing system does not have an adequate quality dispute resolution system to protect all sides of the market. If a coffee is bought through auction and its quality is not found to be the same as the sample, the exporter-buyer can appeal for rechecking. But the rechecking is done by the same authority which undertook the first certification, and moreover, it is the same authority that will be giving the export certification, which can distort incentives for compliance. Also, when an exporter returns the product for rechecking, the supplier has to bear the costs in the meantime. In addition, exporters use this opportunity to renegotiate and lower the purchase price. A third issue is weak risk management. Given the volatile international market, all market players face significant risk that they have difficult managing. There are several types of risks.
First is price risk, due to market conditions. This is followed by the risk related to the quality of coffee that the exporters purchase from the suppliers (akrabi) in the auction market. In addition to the above risk, exporters have to face the risk of weight loss until the coffee reaches the importers. For their part, suppliers do not have sufficient information on the international coffee markets, which exposes them to a higher risk in the auction (Muir, 1997). If, for instance, the supplier purchases coffee on the basis of current price, there is no guarantee that the price will be similar when the coffee is processed and delivered.
Belai Habte-Jesus, MD, MPH
Global Strategic Enterprises, Inc. 4 Peace & Prosperity
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Monday, April 27, 2009
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Global Economic Crisis- A Glimmer of hope or some thing!
The world economy
A glimmer of hope?
Apr 23rd 2009
From The Economist print edition
The worst thing for the world economy would be to assume the worst is over
Illustration by Jon BerkeleyTHE rays are diffuse, but the specks of light are unmistakable. Share prices are up sharply. Even after slipping early this week, two-thirds of the 42 stockmarkets that The Economist tracks have risen in the past six weeks by more than 20%.
Different economic indicators from different parts of the world have brightened. China’s economy is picking up. The slump in global manufacturing seems to be easing. Property markets in America and Britain are showing signs of life, as mortgage rates fall and homes become more affordable. Confidence is growing. A widely tracked index of investor sentiment in Germany has turned positive for the first time in almost two years.
All this is welcome—not least because the slump has been made so much worse by panic and despair. When the financial system was on the brink of collapse in September, investors shunned all but the safest assets, consumers stopped spending and firms shut down. That plunge into the depths could be succeeded by a virtuous cycle, where the wheels of finance turn again, cheerier consumers open their wallets and ambitious firms turn from hoarding cash to pursuing profits.
But, welcome as it is, optimism contains two traps, one obvious, the other more subtle. The obvious trap is that confidence proves misplaced—that the glimmers of hope are misinterpreted as the beginnings of a strong recovery when all they really show is that the rate of decline is slowing.
The subtler trap, particularly for politicians, is that confidence and better news create ruinous complacency. Optimism is one thing, but hubris that the world economy is returning to normal could hinder recovery and block policies to protect against a further plunge into the depths.
Luminous indicators
Begin with those glimmers. It is easy to read too much into the gain in share prices. Stockmarkets usually rally before economies improve, because investors spy the promise of fatter profits before the statisticians document a turnaround.
But plenty of rallies fizzle into nothing. Between 1929 and 1932, the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared by more than 20% four times, only to fall back below its previous lows. Today’s crisis has seen five separate rallies in which share prices rose more than 10% only to subside again.
The economic statistics are hard to interpret, too. The past six months have seen several slumps, each with a different trajectory. The plunge in manufacturing is in part the result of a huge global inventory adjustment. With unsold goods piling up and finance hard to come by, firms around the world have slashed production even faster than demand has fallen. Once firms have run down their stocks they will start making things again and the manufacturing recession will be past its worst.
Even if that moment is at hand, two other slumps are likely to poison the economy for much longer. The most important is the banking crisis and the purge of debt in the bubble economies, especially America and Britain. Demand has plummeted as tighter credit and sinking asset prices have exposed consumers’ excessive borrowing and scared them into saving more. History suggests that such balance-sheet recessions are long and that the recoveries which eventually follow them are feeble.
The second slump is in the emerging world, where many economies have been hit by the sudden fall in private cross-border capital flows. Emerging economies, which imported capital worth 5% of their GDP in 2007, now face a world where cautious investors keep their money at home. According to the IMF, banks, firms and governments in the emerging world have some $1.8 trillion-worth of borrowing to roll over this year, much of that in central and eastern Europe. Even if emerging markets escape a full-blown debt crisis, investors’ confidence is unlikely to recover for years.
These crises sent the world economy into a decline that, on several measures, has been steeper than the onset of the Depression. The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook expects global output to shrink by 1.3% this year, its first fall in 60 years. But the collapse has been countered by the most ambitious policy response in history.
Central banks have pumped out trillions of dollars of liquidity and, in rising numbers, have resorted to an increasingly exotic arsenal of “unconventional” firepower to ease credit markets and loosen monetary conditions even as policy rates approach zero. Governments have battled to prop up their banks, committing trillions of dollars in the process. The IMF has new money. Every big rich country has bolstered demand with fiscal stimulus (and so have many emerging ones). The rich world’s budget deficits will, on average, reach almost 9% of GDP, six times higher than before the crisis hit.
The Depression showed how damaging it can be if governments don’t step in when the rest of the economy seizes up. Yet action on the current scale has never been tried before and nobody knows when it will have an effect—let alone how much difference it will make. Whatever the impact, it would be a mistake to confuse the twitches of an economy on life-support with a lasting recovery. A real recovery depends on government demand being supplanted by sustainable sources of private spending. And here the news is almost uniformly grim.
Searching for new demand
Take the country many are pinning their hopes on: America. The adjustment in the housing market began earlier there than anywhere else. Prices peaked almost three years ago, and are now down by 30%. Manufacturing production has been falling at an annualised rate of more than 20% for the past three months. And the government’s offsetting policy offensive has been the rich world’s boldest.
As the inventory adjustment ends and the stimuli kick in, America’s slump is sure to ease. Cushioned by the government, the economy may even begin to grow again before too long. But it is hard to see the ingredients for a recovery that is robust enough to stop unemployment rising. Weakness abroad will crimp exports. America’s banks are propped up with public capital, but their balance-sheets are clogged with toxic assets.
Consumer spending and firms’ investment will be dragged lower by the need to pay back debt and restore savings. This will be a long slog. Private-sector leverage, which rose by 70% of GDP between 2000 and 2008, has barely begun to unwind. At 4%, the household savings rate has jumped sharply from its low of near zero, but it is still far below its post-war average of 7%. Higher unemployment and rising bankruptcies could easily cause a vicious new downward lurch.
In Britain, given the size of its finance industry, housing boom and consumer debt, the balance-sheet adjustment will, if anything, be greater. The weaker pound will buoy exports, but fragile public finances suggest that Britain has much less scope to use government spending to cushion the private sector than America does—as this week’s flawed budget made painfully clear (see article).
The outlook should in theory be brighter for Germany and Japan. Both have seen output slump faster than in other rich countries because of the collapse in trade and manufacturing, but neither has the huge private borrowing of the sort that haunts the Anglo-Saxon world. Once inventories have adjusted, recovery should come quickly. In practice, though, that seems unlikely, especially in Germany.
As the output slump sends Germany’s jobless rate towards double-digits, it is hard to see consumers going on a spending spree. Nor has the government shown much appetite for boosting demand. Germany’s fiscal stimulus, although large by European standards, falls well short of what it could afford.
Worse, the country’s banks are still in trouble. Germans did not behave recklessly, but their banks did—along with many others in continental Europe. New figures from the IMF suggest that European banks face some $1.1 trillion in losses, hardly any of which have yet been recognised (see article). This week’s German plan to set up several bad banks was no more than a down payment on the restructuring ahead.
Japan has acted more boldly. Its latest package of tax cuts and government spending, unveiled in early April, will provide the biggest fiscal boost, relative to GDP, of any rich country this year. Its economy is likely to perk up, temporarily at least. But its public-debt stock is approaching 200% of GDP, so Japan has scant room for more fiscal stimulus. With export markets weak, demand will soon need to be privately generated at home. But the past two decades offer little evidence that Japan can make that shift.
For the time being, the brightest light glows in China, where a huge inventory adjustment has exaggerated the impact of falling foreign demand, and where the government has the cash and determination to prop up domestic spending. China’s stimulus is already bearing fruit. Loans are soaring and infrastructure investment is growing smartly. The IMF’s latest forecast, that China’s economy will grow by 6.5% this year, may prove conservative. Yet even China has its difficulties. Perhaps three-quarters of the growth will come from government demand, particularly infrastructure spending.
Not much to glow about
Add all this up and the case for optimism fades quickly. The worst is over only in the narrowest sense that the pace of global decline has peaked. Thanks to massive—and unsustainable—fiscal and monetary transfusions, output will eventually stabilise. But in many ways, darker days lie ahead.
Despite the scale of the slump, no conventional recovery is in sight. Growth, when it comes, will be too feeble to stop unemployment rising and idle capacity swelling. And for years most of the world’s economies will depend on their governments.
Consider what that means. Much of the rich world will see jobless rates that reach double-digits, and then stay there. Deflation—a devastating disease in debt-laden economies—could set in as record economic slack pushes down prices and wages, particularly since headline inflation has already plunged thanks to sinking fuel costs. Public debt will soar because of weak growth, prolonged stimulus spending and the growing costs of cleaning up the financial mess.
The OECD’s member countries began the crisis with debt stocks, on average, at 75% of GDP; by 2010 they will reach 100%. One analysis suggests persistent weakness could push the biggest economies’ debt ratios to 140% by 2014. Continuing joblessness, years of weak investment and higher public-debt burdens, in turn, will dent economies’ underlying potential. Although there is no sign that the world economy will return to its trend rate of growth any time soon, it is already clear that this speed limit will be lower than before the crisis hit.
Start preparing for the next decade
Welcome to an era of diminished expectations and continuing dangers; a world where policymakers must steer between the imminent threat of deflation while countering investors’ (reasonable) fears that swelling public debts and massive monetary easing could eventually lead to high inflation; an uncharted world where government borrowing reaches a scale not seen since the second world war, when capital controls ensured that savings stayed at home.
How to cope with these dangers? Certainly not by clutching at scraps of better news. That risks leading to less action right now. Warding off deflation, for instance, will demand more unconventional steps from more central banks for longer than many now seem to foresee.
Laggards, such as the European Central Bank, do themselves and the world no favours by holding back. Nor should governments immediately seek to take back the fiscal stimulus. Prolonged economic weakness does far greater damage to public finances than temporary fiscal activism. Remember how Japan snuffed out its recovery in the 1990s by rushing to raise taxes.
Japan also put off bank reform. Countries facing big balance-sheet adjustments should heed that lesson and nudge reform along, in particular by doing more to clean up and restructure the banks. Countries with surpluses must encourage private spending at home more vigorously. China’s leaders are still doing too little to boost private citizens’ income and their spending by fostering reforms, from widening health-care coverage to forcing state-owned firms to pay higher dividends.
At the same time policymakers must give themselves room to change course in the future. Central banks need to lay out the rules that will govern their exit from exotic forms of policy easing (see article).
That may require new tools: the Federal Reserve would gain from being able to issue bonds that could mop up liquidity. All governments, especially those with the ropiest public finances, should think boldly about how to lower their debt ratios in the medium term—in ways that do not choke off nascent private demand. Rather than pushing up tax rates, they should think about raising retirement ages, reining in health costs and broadening the tax base.
This weekend many of the world’s finance ministers and central bankers will meet in Washington, DC, for the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank. Amid rising confidence, they will be tempted to pat themselves on the back. There is no time for that. The worst global slump since the Depression is far from finished. There is work to do.
A glimmer of hope?
Apr 23rd 2009
From The Economist print edition
The worst thing for the world economy would be to assume the worst is over
Illustration by Jon BerkeleyTHE rays are diffuse, but the specks of light are unmistakable. Share prices are up sharply. Even after slipping early this week, two-thirds of the 42 stockmarkets that The Economist tracks have risen in the past six weeks by more than 20%.
Different economic indicators from different parts of the world have brightened. China’s economy is picking up. The slump in global manufacturing seems to be easing. Property markets in America and Britain are showing signs of life, as mortgage rates fall and homes become more affordable. Confidence is growing. A widely tracked index of investor sentiment in Germany has turned positive for the first time in almost two years.
All this is welcome—not least because the slump has been made so much worse by panic and despair. When the financial system was on the brink of collapse in September, investors shunned all but the safest assets, consumers stopped spending and firms shut down. That plunge into the depths could be succeeded by a virtuous cycle, where the wheels of finance turn again, cheerier consumers open their wallets and ambitious firms turn from hoarding cash to pursuing profits.
But, welcome as it is, optimism contains two traps, one obvious, the other more subtle. The obvious trap is that confidence proves misplaced—that the glimmers of hope are misinterpreted as the beginnings of a strong recovery when all they really show is that the rate of decline is slowing.
The subtler trap, particularly for politicians, is that confidence and better news create ruinous complacency. Optimism is one thing, but hubris that the world economy is returning to normal could hinder recovery and block policies to protect against a further plunge into the depths.
Luminous indicators
Begin with those glimmers. It is easy to read too much into the gain in share prices. Stockmarkets usually rally before economies improve, because investors spy the promise of fatter profits before the statisticians document a turnaround.
But plenty of rallies fizzle into nothing. Between 1929 and 1932, the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared by more than 20% four times, only to fall back below its previous lows. Today’s crisis has seen five separate rallies in which share prices rose more than 10% only to subside again.
The economic statistics are hard to interpret, too. The past six months have seen several slumps, each with a different trajectory. The plunge in manufacturing is in part the result of a huge global inventory adjustment. With unsold goods piling up and finance hard to come by, firms around the world have slashed production even faster than demand has fallen. Once firms have run down their stocks they will start making things again and the manufacturing recession will be past its worst.
Even if that moment is at hand, two other slumps are likely to poison the economy for much longer. The most important is the banking crisis and the purge of debt in the bubble economies, especially America and Britain. Demand has plummeted as tighter credit and sinking asset prices have exposed consumers’ excessive borrowing and scared them into saving more. History suggests that such balance-sheet recessions are long and that the recoveries which eventually follow them are feeble.
The second slump is in the emerging world, where many economies have been hit by the sudden fall in private cross-border capital flows. Emerging economies, which imported capital worth 5% of their GDP in 2007, now face a world where cautious investors keep their money at home. According to the IMF, banks, firms and governments in the emerging world have some $1.8 trillion-worth of borrowing to roll over this year, much of that in central and eastern Europe. Even if emerging markets escape a full-blown debt crisis, investors’ confidence is unlikely to recover for years.
These crises sent the world economy into a decline that, on several measures, has been steeper than the onset of the Depression. The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook expects global output to shrink by 1.3% this year, its first fall in 60 years. But the collapse has been countered by the most ambitious policy response in history.
Central banks have pumped out trillions of dollars of liquidity and, in rising numbers, have resorted to an increasingly exotic arsenal of “unconventional” firepower to ease credit markets and loosen monetary conditions even as policy rates approach zero. Governments have battled to prop up their banks, committing trillions of dollars in the process. The IMF has new money. Every big rich country has bolstered demand with fiscal stimulus (and so have many emerging ones). The rich world’s budget deficits will, on average, reach almost 9% of GDP, six times higher than before the crisis hit.
The Depression showed how damaging it can be if governments don’t step in when the rest of the economy seizes up. Yet action on the current scale has never been tried before and nobody knows when it will have an effect—let alone how much difference it will make. Whatever the impact, it would be a mistake to confuse the twitches of an economy on life-support with a lasting recovery. A real recovery depends on government demand being supplanted by sustainable sources of private spending. And here the news is almost uniformly grim.
Searching for new demand
Take the country many are pinning their hopes on: America. The adjustment in the housing market began earlier there than anywhere else. Prices peaked almost three years ago, and are now down by 30%. Manufacturing production has been falling at an annualised rate of more than 20% for the past three months. And the government’s offsetting policy offensive has been the rich world’s boldest.
As the inventory adjustment ends and the stimuli kick in, America’s slump is sure to ease. Cushioned by the government, the economy may even begin to grow again before too long. But it is hard to see the ingredients for a recovery that is robust enough to stop unemployment rising. Weakness abroad will crimp exports. America’s banks are propped up with public capital, but their balance-sheets are clogged with toxic assets.
Consumer spending and firms’ investment will be dragged lower by the need to pay back debt and restore savings. This will be a long slog. Private-sector leverage, which rose by 70% of GDP between 2000 and 2008, has barely begun to unwind. At 4%, the household savings rate has jumped sharply from its low of near zero, but it is still far below its post-war average of 7%. Higher unemployment and rising bankruptcies could easily cause a vicious new downward lurch.
In Britain, given the size of its finance industry, housing boom and consumer debt, the balance-sheet adjustment will, if anything, be greater. The weaker pound will buoy exports, but fragile public finances suggest that Britain has much less scope to use government spending to cushion the private sector than America does—as this week’s flawed budget made painfully clear (see article).
The outlook should in theory be brighter for Germany and Japan. Both have seen output slump faster than in other rich countries because of the collapse in trade and manufacturing, but neither has the huge private borrowing of the sort that haunts the Anglo-Saxon world. Once inventories have adjusted, recovery should come quickly. In practice, though, that seems unlikely, especially in Germany.
As the output slump sends Germany’s jobless rate towards double-digits, it is hard to see consumers going on a spending spree. Nor has the government shown much appetite for boosting demand. Germany’s fiscal stimulus, although large by European standards, falls well short of what it could afford.
Worse, the country’s banks are still in trouble. Germans did not behave recklessly, but their banks did—along with many others in continental Europe. New figures from the IMF suggest that European banks face some $1.1 trillion in losses, hardly any of which have yet been recognised (see article). This week’s German plan to set up several bad banks was no more than a down payment on the restructuring ahead.
Japan has acted more boldly. Its latest package of tax cuts and government spending, unveiled in early April, will provide the biggest fiscal boost, relative to GDP, of any rich country this year. Its economy is likely to perk up, temporarily at least. But its public-debt stock is approaching 200% of GDP, so Japan has scant room for more fiscal stimulus. With export markets weak, demand will soon need to be privately generated at home. But the past two decades offer little evidence that Japan can make that shift.
For the time being, the brightest light glows in China, where a huge inventory adjustment has exaggerated the impact of falling foreign demand, and where the government has the cash and determination to prop up domestic spending. China’s stimulus is already bearing fruit. Loans are soaring and infrastructure investment is growing smartly. The IMF’s latest forecast, that China’s economy will grow by 6.5% this year, may prove conservative. Yet even China has its difficulties. Perhaps three-quarters of the growth will come from government demand, particularly infrastructure spending.
Not much to glow about
Add all this up and the case for optimism fades quickly. The worst is over only in the narrowest sense that the pace of global decline has peaked. Thanks to massive—and unsustainable—fiscal and monetary transfusions, output will eventually stabilise. But in many ways, darker days lie ahead.
Despite the scale of the slump, no conventional recovery is in sight. Growth, when it comes, will be too feeble to stop unemployment rising and idle capacity swelling. And for years most of the world’s economies will depend on their governments.
Consider what that means. Much of the rich world will see jobless rates that reach double-digits, and then stay there. Deflation—a devastating disease in debt-laden economies—could set in as record economic slack pushes down prices and wages, particularly since headline inflation has already plunged thanks to sinking fuel costs. Public debt will soar because of weak growth, prolonged stimulus spending and the growing costs of cleaning up the financial mess.
The OECD’s member countries began the crisis with debt stocks, on average, at 75% of GDP; by 2010 they will reach 100%. One analysis suggests persistent weakness could push the biggest economies’ debt ratios to 140% by 2014. Continuing joblessness, years of weak investment and higher public-debt burdens, in turn, will dent economies’ underlying potential. Although there is no sign that the world economy will return to its trend rate of growth any time soon, it is already clear that this speed limit will be lower than before the crisis hit.
Start preparing for the next decade
Welcome to an era of diminished expectations and continuing dangers; a world where policymakers must steer between the imminent threat of deflation while countering investors’ (reasonable) fears that swelling public debts and massive monetary easing could eventually lead to high inflation; an uncharted world where government borrowing reaches a scale not seen since the second world war, when capital controls ensured that savings stayed at home.
How to cope with these dangers? Certainly not by clutching at scraps of better news. That risks leading to less action right now. Warding off deflation, for instance, will demand more unconventional steps from more central banks for longer than many now seem to foresee.
Laggards, such as the European Central Bank, do themselves and the world no favours by holding back. Nor should governments immediately seek to take back the fiscal stimulus. Prolonged economic weakness does far greater damage to public finances than temporary fiscal activism. Remember how Japan snuffed out its recovery in the 1990s by rushing to raise taxes.
Japan also put off bank reform. Countries facing big balance-sheet adjustments should heed that lesson and nudge reform along, in particular by doing more to clean up and restructure the banks. Countries with surpluses must encourage private spending at home more vigorously. China’s leaders are still doing too little to boost private citizens’ income and their spending by fostering reforms, from widening health-care coverage to forcing state-owned firms to pay higher dividends.
At the same time policymakers must give themselves room to change course in the future. Central banks need to lay out the rules that will govern their exit from exotic forms of policy easing (see article).
That may require new tools: the Federal Reserve would gain from being able to issue bonds that could mop up liquidity. All governments, especially those with the ropiest public finances, should think boldly about how to lower their debt ratios in the medium term—in ways that do not choke off nascent private demand. Rather than pushing up tax rates, they should think about raising retirement ages, reining in health costs and broadening the tax base.
This weekend many of the world’s finance ministers and central bankers will meet in Washington, DC, for the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank. Amid rising confidence, they will be tempted to pat themselves on the back. There is no time for that. The worst global slump since the Depression is far from finished. There is work to do.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Releasing CIA Toruture Authorization Memos
CIA Objections Slowed Torture Memos Release
Saturday 18 April 2009
by: Pamela Hess | Visit article original @ The Associated Press
Former CIA director George Tenet testifies before the September 11 commission in 2004. Tenet was one of four former CIA officials that tried to block the Obama administration's release of memos on torture issued during the G.W. Bush presidency. (Photo: Charles Dharapak / AP)
Washington - Four former CIA directors opposed releasing classified Bush-era interrogation memos, officials say, describing objections that went all the way to the White House and slowed release of the records.
Former CIA chiefs Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, George Tenet and John Deutch all called the White House in March warning that release of the so-called "torture memos" would compromise intelligence operations, current and former officials say. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to detail internal government discussions.
President Barack Obama ultimately overruled those concerns after internal discussions that intensified in the weeks after the former directors intervened. The memos were released Thursday.
Obama's personal involvement grew as the decision neared, and he even personally led a National Security Council session on the matter, said four senior administration officials.
Senior White House adviser David Axelrod, who said he also talked with Obama about the pending release of the memos in recent weeks, said the CIA directors' opposition was considered seriously but did not impede the decision-making process.
"It wasn't a matter of, it was a go and then the CIA directors weighed in and it slowed things down," Axelrod said Friday. "The fact is that he gathered all the facts throughout the process."
The memos detailed the legal rationales that senior Bush administration lawyers drew up authorizing the CIA to use simulated drowning and other harsh techniques on terror detainees.
Obama gave the matter "the appropriate reflection," Axelrod said. He said Obama's deliberations revolved around "the issue of national security versus the rule of law," and amounted to "one of the most profound issues the president of the United States has to deal with."
On March 18, the Justice Department told CIA Director Leon Panetta - as he was leaving for a foreign trip - that it would be recommending that the White House release the memos almost completely uncensored, officials said.
Panetta told Attorney General Eric Holder and officials in the White House that the administration needed to discuss the possibility that the memos' release might expose CIA officers to lawsuits on allegations of torture and abuse. Panetta also pushed for more censorship of the memos, officials said.
The Justice Department also informed other senior CIA leaders of the decision to release the memos, and, as a courtesy, told former agency directors.
Senior CIA officials objected, arguing that the release would hurt the agency's ability to interrogate prisoners in the future. They also said the move would further tarnish CIA officers who had acted on the Bush officials' legal guidance. And they warned that the action would erode foreign intelligence services' trust in the CIA's ability to protect national security secrets, current and former officials said.
The four former directors immediately protested to the White House, officials said. The enhanced interrogation procedures outlined in the memos had been approved on Tenet's watch during the Bush administration.
On March 19, the Justice Department requested a two-week delay in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union that asked for release of the memos. Justice officials told the court dealing with that lawsuit that it was considering releasing the memos voluntarily.
Two weeks later, Justice lawyers told the court the memos would come out on or before April 16.
As Obama mulled over the intelligence community's concerns and clashing arguments from the Justice Department that the memos needed to be released, the president's contacts, meetings and phone conversations on the Bush-era memos grew so numerous over the past month, officials said, that advisers lost count.
In addition to the NSC meeting that he chaired, Obama also held high-level sessions with Holder and other Cabinet members.
He also reached into lower rungs of the government for advice and even talked to an unidentified NSC official from the Bush administration, the officials said.
Inside the White House, according to aides, Obama expressed concerns that releasing the memos could threaten ongoing intelligence operations as well as American officials. He also echoed the CIA chiefs' worries about U.S. relationships with always-skittish foreign intelligence services.
The Justice Department argued that the ACLU lawsuit would in the end force the administration to release the documents anyway, officials said.
Obama eventually agreed. The administration decided it would be better to make the release voluntarily, so as to not be seen as being forced to do so, the officials said.
Obama also decided that the least redacting possible should be done, White House officials said. Thus the only items blacked out included names of U.S. employees or foreign services or items related to techniques still in use.
Still, CIA officials needed reassurance about the decision, the officials said.
Obama took the unusual step of accompanying his decision with a personal letter to CIA employees. He also devoted a big share of his public statement to saying - and repeating - that he believed strongly in keeping intelligence operations secret and operations about them classified. And he said he would not apologize for doing so in the future.
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Associated Press Writers Jennifer Loven, Liz Sidoti and Devlin Barrett contributed to this story.
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Comments
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Nora, you are right about
Mon, 04/20/2009 - 13:43 — Steve Newcomb (not verified)
Nora, you are right about everything you said, except that forgiveness by a nation of another nation's misbehavior is essential for peace (AFTER the truth is fully known). Now, once again, the U.S. has reason to ask the forgiveness of other nations. Good. Nobody's perfect, and American exceptionalism is a notion that deserves burning in effigy and stomping into the dust. In answer to your question, what warped us was the notion of American exceptionalism. Those who should have blown the whistle did not do so because of this notion, cloaked in terms like "the primacy of American sovereignty" and "protection of our troops from the actions of non-U.S. courts" like the one at the Hague. Like everyone else, Americans need protection from the crimes of their own government. Dick Cheney is a poster child for that particular truth, as are tens of thousands of grievously wounded veterans.
I agree that amnesty for
Sun, 04/19/2009 - 23:53 — nora (not verified)
I agree that amnesty for torturers contradicts the US action of taking, to a world court at Nuremberg, the Germans and Japanese torturers, finding them guilty of torture, and executing them. I understand what warped German society to commit genocide, torture writ large, and I do not forgive. I understand what has warped Israeli society to genocide and I do not forgive. I am less certain what warped US society to torture. The extremity of stress in the case of Germany and Israel does not seem to be present in this country. Did we do it because we could? We must go beyond soul searching and act with parity.
Saturday 18 April 2009
by: Pamela Hess | Visit article original @ The Associated Press
Former CIA director George Tenet testifies before the September 11 commission in 2004. Tenet was one of four former CIA officials that tried to block the Obama administration's release of memos on torture issued during the G.W. Bush presidency. (Photo: Charles Dharapak / AP)
Washington - Four former CIA directors opposed releasing classified Bush-era interrogation memos, officials say, describing objections that went all the way to the White House and slowed release of the records.
Former CIA chiefs Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, George Tenet and John Deutch all called the White House in March warning that release of the so-called "torture memos" would compromise intelligence operations, current and former officials say. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to detail internal government discussions.
President Barack Obama ultimately overruled those concerns after internal discussions that intensified in the weeks after the former directors intervened. The memos were released Thursday.
Obama's personal involvement grew as the decision neared, and he even personally led a National Security Council session on the matter, said four senior administration officials.
Senior White House adviser David Axelrod, who said he also talked with Obama about the pending release of the memos in recent weeks, said the CIA directors' opposition was considered seriously but did not impede the decision-making process.
"It wasn't a matter of, it was a go and then the CIA directors weighed in and it slowed things down," Axelrod said Friday. "The fact is that he gathered all the facts throughout the process."
The memos detailed the legal rationales that senior Bush administration lawyers drew up authorizing the CIA to use simulated drowning and other harsh techniques on terror detainees.
Obama gave the matter "the appropriate reflection," Axelrod said. He said Obama's deliberations revolved around "the issue of national security versus the rule of law," and amounted to "one of the most profound issues the president of the United States has to deal with."
On March 18, the Justice Department told CIA Director Leon Panetta - as he was leaving for a foreign trip - that it would be recommending that the White House release the memos almost completely uncensored, officials said.
Panetta told Attorney General Eric Holder and officials in the White House that the administration needed to discuss the possibility that the memos' release might expose CIA officers to lawsuits on allegations of torture and abuse. Panetta also pushed for more censorship of the memos, officials said.
The Justice Department also informed other senior CIA leaders of the decision to release the memos, and, as a courtesy, told former agency directors.
Senior CIA officials objected, arguing that the release would hurt the agency's ability to interrogate prisoners in the future. They also said the move would further tarnish CIA officers who had acted on the Bush officials' legal guidance. And they warned that the action would erode foreign intelligence services' trust in the CIA's ability to protect national security secrets, current and former officials said.
The four former directors immediately protested to the White House, officials said. The enhanced interrogation procedures outlined in the memos had been approved on Tenet's watch during the Bush administration.
On March 19, the Justice Department requested a two-week delay in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union that asked for release of the memos. Justice officials told the court dealing with that lawsuit that it was considering releasing the memos voluntarily.
Two weeks later, Justice lawyers told the court the memos would come out on or before April 16.
As Obama mulled over the intelligence community's concerns and clashing arguments from the Justice Department that the memos needed to be released, the president's contacts, meetings and phone conversations on the Bush-era memos grew so numerous over the past month, officials said, that advisers lost count.
In addition to the NSC meeting that he chaired, Obama also held high-level sessions with Holder and other Cabinet members.
He also reached into lower rungs of the government for advice and even talked to an unidentified NSC official from the Bush administration, the officials said.
Inside the White House, according to aides, Obama expressed concerns that releasing the memos could threaten ongoing intelligence operations as well as American officials. He also echoed the CIA chiefs' worries about U.S. relationships with always-skittish foreign intelligence services.
The Justice Department argued that the ACLU lawsuit would in the end force the administration to release the documents anyway, officials said.
Obama eventually agreed. The administration decided it would be better to make the release voluntarily, so as to not be seen as being forced to do so, the officials said.
Obama also decided that the least redacting possible should be done, White House officials said. Thus the only items blacked out included names of U.S. employees or foreign services or items related to techniques still in use.
Still, CIA officials needed reassurance about the decision, the officials said.
Obama took the unusual step of accompanying his decision with a personal letter to CIA employees. He also devoted a big share of his public statement to saying - and repeating - that he believed strongly in keeping intelligence operations secret and operations about them classified. And he said he would not apologize for doing so in the future.
-------
Associated Press Writers Jennifer Loven, Liz Sidoti and Devlin Barrett contributed to this story.
»
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107, THIS MATERIAL IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. TRUTHOUT HAS NO AFFILIATION WHATSOEVER WITH THE ORIGINATOR OF THIS ARTICLE NOR IS TRUTHOUT ENDORSED OR SPONSORED BY THE ORIGINATOR.
"VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS ARE PROVIDED AS A CONVENIENCE TO OUR READERS AND ALLOW FOR VERIFICATION OF AUTHENTICITY. HOWEVER, AS ORIGINATING PAGES ARE OFTEN UPDATED BY THEIR ORIGINATING HOST SITES, THE VERSIONS POSTED ON TO MAY NOT MATCH THE VERSIONS OUR READERS VIEW WHEN CLICKING THE "VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS.
Comments
This is a moderated forum. It may take a little while for comments to go live. Be civil and on-topic, don't threaten or advocate violence, please keep it under 300 words. Thanks for participating.
Nora, you are right about
Mon, 04/20/2009 - 13:43 — Steve Newcomb (not verified)
Nora, you are right about everything you said, except that forgiveness by a nation of another nation's misbehavior is essential for peace (AFTER the truth is fully known). Now, once again, the U.S. has reason to ask the forgiveness of other nations. Good. Nobody's perfect, and American exceptionalism is a notion that deserves burning in effigy and stomping into the dust. In answer to your question, what warped us was the notion of American exceptionalism. Those who should have blown the whistle did not do so because of this notion, cloaked in terms like "the primacy of American sovereignty" and "protection of our troops from the actions of non-U.S. courts" like the one at the Hague. Like everyone else, Americans need protection from the crimes of their own government. Dick Cheney is a poster child for that particular truth, as are tens of thousands of grievously wounded veterans.
I agree that amnesty for
Sun, 04/19/2009 - 23:53 — nora (not verified)
I agree that amnesty for torturers contradicts the US action of taking, to a world court at Nuremberg, the Germans and Japanese torturers, finding them guilty of torture, and executing them. I understand what warped German society to commit genocide, torture writ large, and I do not forgive. I understand what has warped Israeli society to genocide and I do not forgive. I am less certain what warped US society to torture. The extremity of stress in the case of Germany and Israel does not seem to be present in this country. Did we do it because we could? We must go beyond soul searching and act with parity.
Bush institute of Management om Dallas Texas?
Failures to Communicate
Tuesday 14 April 2009
by: Richard Cohen | Visit article original @ The Washington Post
George W. Bush. (Photo: Getty Images)
Former president George W. Bush and some of his White House aides are gathering in Dallas this week to plan the future George W. Bush Policy Institute. There, I guess, they will ponder grand themes and marble foyers, but I propose they begin by simply renaming the place. I suggest naming it the "George W. Bush Institute of Management Failure" and dedicating it to studying how this presidency went so wrong - a task as big as Texas itself.
Bush's tenure was truly remarkable. He left office with the lowest presidential poll ratings in 60 years, two wars begun and not ended, and the deepest recession since the Great Depression. If it's true that we learn from our mistakes, Bush's eight years represent a bonanza of lessons.
What commends the Bush presidency to further study was its sheer managerial ineptitude. This is irony aplenty for a man not known for irony. Bush's one area of expertise, after all, supposedly was in management. Not only had he been a businessman, but he had graduated from Harvard Business School. Bush was the Decider. He was a delegator. He was precise and punctual - early to the office, early out of the office and a clean desk at all times. Wow!
Conventional wisdom holds that the bungling of the Iraq war was a consequence of ideology run amok. Maybe. But it was also an example of awful management. Whether you supported the war or opposed it, you have to concede that it should have ended years ago and, along with the invasion of Grenada, be a fit dissertation subject for a desperate PhD candidate and not, as it remains, a festering debacle.
At the insistence of Donald Rumsfeld, the war was fought with too few troops, and then, when the country was occupied, too few troops were there to maintain law and order. Matters were made infinitely worse when L. Paul Bremer, Rumsfeld's designated viceroy, disbanded the Iraqi army, freeing a good many armed and unemployed young men to shoot the place up. Bremer also purged Baath Party members from the government, leaving precisely no one in senior positions who knew anything. This, the evidence suggests, was modeled on the Bush White House itself.
Had Bush, Rumsfeld and Bremer performed better, the war might have ended a lot sooner. It finally took the surge to get things under control - and that may yet turn out to be too optimistic a statement. Still, the surge would not have been necessary had the war been handled competently from the beginning.
The war in Afghanistan waged against the Taliban, which had provided Osama bin Laden with sanctuary, was similarly mishandled. Once again, too few troops were sent to do too big a job. Good managers know how to make choices. Bush not only chose wrongly when he gave Iraq precedence over Afghanistan, but he chose not to choose at all when he thought both wars could be fought on the cheap - no draft, no tax hike, no sacrifice from the general public.
The Bush Institute of Management Failure should also look into how the administration was so late in noticing that the country was slipping into a profound recession. This should be coupled with a look-see at how Bush's various appointees failed to regulate the banking, insurance, housing and mortgage industries. (Have I mentioned Hurricane Katrina and "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job?" No? Just as well.)
Bush and his aides ought to devote time to what went wrong at the Justice Department. It was politicized and mismanaged to the point where even the Senate noticed. U.S. attorneys apparently had to pass political muster, the Constitution was interpreted along monarchical lines, and somehow the trial of Ted Stevens was so botched that his conviction was thrown out. Alberto Gonzales, a Bush crony, was supervised from the White House by Harriet Miers, an old Bush friend whose qualification for the job was that she was an old Bush friend.
If Bush and his aides do get around to politics, it is my fondest wish that they ask the always voluble Karl Rove - that latter-day Mark Hanna who was going to create a Republican era to last 30 or 40 years - what happened. Rove has reduced the Republican Party to himself, Rush Limbaugh and a scattering of red ties in Congress that only he can name. He has so very much to teach us.
Bush's presidency - rich in lessons - should keep everyone occupied deep into the night. If it's not too late - and especially for those already critical of Barack Obama - let me suggest dessert.
How's humble pie?
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"VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS ARE PROVIDED AS A CONVENIENCE TO OUR READERS AND ALLOW FOR VERIFICATION OF AUTHENTICITY. HOWEVER, AS ORIGINATING PAGES ARE OFTEN UPDATED BY THEIR ORIGINATING HOST SITES, THE VERSIONS POSTED ON TO MAY NOT MATCH THE VERSIONS OUR READERS VIEW WHEN CLICKING THE "VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS.
Comments
This is a moderated forum. It may take a little while for comments to go live. Be civil and on-topic, don't threaten or advocate violence, please keep it under 300 words. Thanks for participating.
If only Smedley D. Butler
Fri, 04/17/2009 - 01:49 — J L G (not verified)
If only Smedley D. Butler were here to give an updated assessment on the benefactors of the most recent two wars and this past presidency. The U.S. Marine Corps General did a fabulous job illuminating the corruption and "benefits" of wars of the 19th and early 20th century in War is a Racket. Read it and weep. Those who say, "Follow the money," are right on target. That is where you'll find the criminals and fat-cats who found fertile fields in the Bush-Cheney years.
A proverb I first heard some
Thu, 04/16/2009 - 13:18 — bogi666 (not verified)
A proverb I first heard some 40 years ago "NEVER HIRE A HARVARD M.B.A." FOR WHICH BUSH SHOULD BE THE POSTER BOY.Bush had his epiphany to be President in 1984 while watching a matinee showing of a science fiction movie. This was in his drugging/drinking days so who knows what hallucination he was having then. One of the things that are taught in business school is contingency planning should something go wrong with a project. Another is budgeting. Bush must have either missed those classes or was stoned or both.
Follow the leader and refuse
Thu, 04/16/2009 - 09:48 — Anonymous (not verified)
Follow the leader and refuse to prosecute anyone for anything. Fair is fair.
We need desperately to set
Thu, 04/16/2009 - 09:23 — Anonymous (not verified)
We need desperately to set up a citizens court. We need to clean house, both of them. Mr. Dejanjuk is still being persecuted after 60 years. Why not our terribles now? Let's not wait 60 years. If Bush attacked Israel we would have him hung by now.
Trashing Bush are we? Why
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 22:10 — Americonned (not verified)
Trashing Bush are we? Why not blame ourselves and do something about it? We can't wait for the government to do anything. We have to force they're hand. A letter and phone call campaign would do some good. Not just voting on line. Actually give them physical evidence that we are not happy. Bother them until they bother Bush.
WTC 7. All the answers are
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 13:07 — mysterioso (not verified)
WTC 7. All the answers are there but nobody's looking. Why is that?
You Will NEVER get such an
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 12:01 — Anonymous (not verified)
You Will NEVER get such an honest review of the BuSh Administration as long as almost all Media in America is now owned and operated by just a few huge Corporations...
A WAR-FOR-PROFIT IS MASS
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 07:21 — Always Ask WHY (not verified)
A WAR-FOR-PROFIT IS MASS MURDER. Forget "failure." The Bush Mafia goals were achieved with great success! They attained all they intended: mass controlled chaos, looting of the U.S. Treasury, dividing up the Iraqi oil fields among "friends", with the added bonus of perverted and depraved sexual torture, discussed in great in the Oval Officein, I'm sure, "satisfying", detail. They twisted minds with lying to an extent never known in the history of a U.S. president and vice-president and minions. Mass murder, torture, lies, treason, fraud. SICK, TWISTED, PERVERTED, INDIFFERENT TO HUMAN LIFE. THESE PEOPLE DESERVE TO ROT IN PRISON FOR THE REST OF THEIR NATURAL LIVES... UNDER A MICROSCOPE OF PSYCHIATRISTS IN ORDER TO DETERMINE HOW HUMAN BEINGS BECOME SO DETACHED AND DEPRAVED.
It should be studied.
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 05:49 — Anonymous (not verified)
It should be studied. Intensely. Senator John Kyl (Az) sent a letter to the NY Times recently espousing most of the tax and economic programs imposed by Bush II. Apparently the GOP has not learned anything in the last 28 years.
MISSION
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 05:24 — jstuv (not verified)
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! The Bush/Chaney Administration was able to succeed where Osama bin Laden failed. Should the crimes of treason, by the Bush/Chaney Administration, be overlooked, then these crimes of high treason will be repeated in future administrations.
The Allies conducted the Nürenberg Trials (in 1945 to 1949) for several reasons: A) To make aware that these crimes were actually committed,
B) To examine HOW these crimes were able to be committed,
C) Who committed these crimes and
D) To punish the criminals. Should the guilty not be punished, then, their Criminal Acts would be absolved and could easily be repeated. There would not be any justice. “The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government.”
Should the Bush/Chaney Administration (alleged) criminals not be prosecuted, not be brought to trial and not found guilty, then, like the Ronald Reagan Republican group, they will be glorified, deified and praised. With ALL the evidence available: Eyewitnesses, Documents, Dead Bodies, Remnants of Death Camps, Newsreel clips, piles of clothes, piles of shoes, piles of hair, piles of eyeglasses, piles of gold teeth –COLD HARD EVIDENCE-, there are Holocaust Deniers being celebrated, glorified and believed.
So, too, these (alleged) criminals will be praised and glorified for future generations. We will have not have learned from history –and the American society will repeat this debacle. With ALL the evidence available: Eyewitnesses, Documents, Dead Bodies, Remnants of Death Camps, Newsreel clips, piles of clothes, piles of shoes, piles of hair, piles of eyeglasses, piles of gold teeth –COLD HARD EVIDENCE-, there are Holocaust Deniers being celebrated, glorified and believed. So, too, these (alleged) criminals will be praised and glorified for future generations. We will have not have learned from history –and the American society will repeat this debacle.
Thank you for an excellent
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 04:59 — JustinaForJustice (not verified)
Thank you for an excellent synopsis of the most glaring errors of the Bush-Cheney regime, although you left out Bush's systematic demolition of our tri-partite constitutional government, wherein our Congress and Courts were denuded of oversight authority. The failure to investigate and prosecute the criminals involved in the Iran-Contra scandal left the main evil doers free to re-appear and carry on with their nefarious schemes as high officials in the Bush-Cheney administration. We must learn from that failure and thoroughly investigate and clean out the neo-fascists in the Bush-Cheney administration so they can never re-appear to damage the United States again. The U.S. has been totally shamed in the eyes of the world and in those of its citizens. To restore any semblance of honor, we must investigate and prosecute all the criminals in the Bush-Cheney administration, including Bush and Cheney.
The sad part about this
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 02:07 — Anonymous (not verified)
The sad part about this article is that even in this day and age; Mr Cohen still believes that if the war had been prosecuted better, it would have all been OK. Never mind that the rationale was flawed from the beginning. If you are going to invade and kill people, you should do it right!
Let me tell you from a non
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 01:40 — Dauphin Ermite (not verified)
Let me tell you from a non american perspective, Bush's presidency has not been the high point of USA's moral and political preeminence in the world. I am severely understating... And when one adds Cheney to the equation, the word "disgust" is a mild one. Many of my friends in the political and social spheres are asking why Bush and Cheney are not presently prosecuted for crimes of war and crimes of desecration of democracy and human rights. No we are not wobling at the knees, Chuck, just using a bit of our two neurones...
So when do we start
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 01:34 — Jonathan Mitchell (not verified)
So when do we start prosecuting these monsters to erase their dangerous precedent from the blackboard of U.S. history? (Roaring silence from the Obama administration...)
All was made possible by
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 01:00 — PortArnie (not verified)
All was made possible by 9/11 maybe that should be investigated now or is this institude formed to prevent that!
Bankruptcies 'R' US Bush,
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 00:40 — Anonymous (not verified)
Bankruptcies 'R' US Bush, the lying fool who led every company he was involved with into bankruptcy, bailed out in the past by his partners who financed Al-Queda, his criminal empire finally busted the entire economy with its trickle down corruption. Suck this worm into a jail cell and regain the respect of the thinking world.
This article has listed the
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 22:52 — Devon Noll, MPA (not verified)
This article has listed the faults of the Bush Administration, in part, but something else that was not addressed should give us all pause. Bush and his cadre of thieves, liars, and rogues who would have had a dictatorship in place if not for a failed emergency are once again meeting in private to plan - a policy institute! Let's get a clue here - these guys want to plan policy agendas for the likes of Cantor et al, and how to rebuild the Republican policies in a new government. They will be working long and hard to complete what they started in 2000 and they have the money, the media, and the people to succeed again. This group should be watched very carefully, see who they work with, and be very careful about dismissing them. This group is not done, and as I said when Miers, Rove, and Gonzalez left DC, they have fallen below media radar for a long time now, which means that many things are afoot that may not be quite so noticeable now because of Bush's economic debacle and the media's penchant for distraction. Be very, very careful!
NYCartist is right! There
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 22:33 — Anonymous (not verified)
NYCartist is right! There were no failures as far as any of the gang of escapees from hell is concerned - they stole 10 trillion dollars from the world and we are now witnessing the aggrandizement of it all - like a statue to Satan in Hell. Instead, can we quickly set up a new commando unit to quickly put bars on all the doors and windows of that monstrosity while they are all in there admiring their killing spree and then kinda loose the keys? Please... pretty please
The Bush administration was
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 22:19 — Anonymous (not verified)
The Bush administration was a success - in the same way Tony Soprano was a success when he took over his friend's sporting goods store and busted it out for the benefit of himself and his crew. We keep looking at the mess Bush left behind while we really need to look for all those who benefited from this enterprise, understand what they did, how they did it and set up safeguards to keep anyone from being able to do this again.
As long as not ONE tax
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 22:14 — Anonymous (not verified)
As long as not ONE tax dollar is spent on it, let them build their monument to corruption and stupidity. It will make good study for future generations. The Rove propaganda gallery should be especially interesting.
Let's NOT move on! Bush
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 21:50 — Robert B. (not verified)
Let's NOT move on! Bush should be handed over to the International Criminal Court ASAP.
The “Decider” and
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 21:15 — Anonymous (not verified)
The “Decider” and friends should use the meeting to systematize their management experiences and draw the lessons learned on the best and more cost effective management strategies to....shot up the unemployment, foreclosures and, bankruptcies rates; increase environmental vulnerabilities, reach higher poverty rates; “left behind” more children without health benefits, provide fatter paychecks for CEOs to reward incompetence, “improve” political corruption, claim secrecy privileges and more to hide from the people (who are supposed to be informed) enhance violation of human rights and international law, make “rapid lousy assessment” and response to Katrina, obtain high disapproval level, and more and more nationally and internationally. That's a heck of management! Worth a book for the Nobel Prize.
>Thankya f'r y'r support!
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 21:08 — Anonymous (not verified)
>Thankya f'r y'r support! My institute is gonna be diff'rent, it's gonna have a barbecue pit in the back, and a sub-basement where we're gonna prototype the tortures of a future policy. Some folks may be lookin' for that pointy headed progressive stuff, well that will not be part of the plan of my policy institute. It's gonna be on 40 acres, on a pastoral type setting with lots of meadows where Dick Cheney can blast away at skeet and various folks he don't like.
I wonder if Bush can yet
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 21:03 — Anonymous (not verified)
I wonder if Bush can yet name any of his mistakes!
Trashing Bush was great
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 20:58 — Anonymous (not verified)
Trashing Bush was great sport while he was in office. Now it's pointless. Lets move on, get the war crimes trial going, and put this where it belongs: in our history books under the chapter titled Mistakes We Should Avoid Repeating. In fact, lets make it a required course for all students. America Is Not Infallible 101.
This article is pussing
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 19:46 — Anonymous (not verified)
This article is pussing footing! not one word about how the war was an illegal invasion!!
Let's hope America remembers
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 18:37 — Anonymous (not verified)
Let's hope America remembers this the next time we get the urge to put a born-again former-alcoholic party-frat boy whose military and business accomplishments consist mainly of getting preferential treatment from daddy's friends in charge.
It is beyond the scope of
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 17:58 — Mg (not verified)
It is beyond the scope of George W. Bush to actually make sense of all that he has done, and probably will do. From our perspective on this side of his face, it doesn't look too good.
Bush expanded Pres. powers,
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 17:41 — NYCartist (not verified)
Bush expanded Pres. powers, gave cronies jobs, got funding for 2 wars, tax cuts for his friends...This is failure?
Or, America could have
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 17:23 — Anonymous (not verified)
Or, America could have listened to the millions of people here and abroad who knew that the invasion of Iraq was designed to steal their oil, and not done it at all.
Tuesday 14 April 2009
by: Richard Cohen | Visit article original @ The Washington Post
George W. Bush. (Photo: Getty Images)
Former president George W. Bush and some of his White House aides are gathering in Dallas this week to plan the future George W. Bush Policy Institute. There, I guess, they will ponder grand themes and marble foyers, but I propose they begin by simply renaming the place. I suggest naming it the "George W. Bush Institute of Management Failure" and dedicating it to studying how this presidency went so wrong - a task as big as Texas itself.
Bush's tenure was truly remarkable. He left office with the lowest presidential poll ratings in 60 years, two wars begun and not ended, and the deepest recession since the Great Depression. If it's true that we learn from our mistakes, Bush's eight years represent a bonanza of lessons.
What commends the Bush presidency to further study was its sheer managerial ineptitude. This is irony aplenty for a man not known for irony. Bush's one area of expertise, after all, supposedly was in management. Not only had he been a businessman, but he had graduated from Harvard Business School. Bush was the Decider. He was a delegator. He was precise and punctual - early to the office, early out of the office and a clean desk at all times. Wow!
Conventional wisdom holds that the bungling of the Iraq war was a consequence of ideology run amok. Maybe. But it was also an example of awful management. Whether you supported the war or opposed it, you have to concede that it should have ended years ago and, along with the invasion of Grenada, be a fit dissertation subject for a desperate PhD candidate and not, as it remains, a festering debacle.
At the insistence of Donald Rumsfeld, the war was fought with too few troops, and then, when the country was occupied, too few troops were there to maintain law and order. Matters were made infinitely worse when L. Paul Bremer, Rumsfeld's designated viceroy, disbanded the Iraqi army, freeing a good many armed and unemployed young men to shoot the place up. Bremer also purged Baath Party members from the government, leaving precisely no one in senior positions who knew anything. This, the evidence suggests, was modeled on the Bush White House itself.
Had Bush, Rumsfeld and Bremer performed better, the war might have ended a lot sooner. It finally took the surge to get things under control - and that may yet turn out to be too optimistic a statement. Still, the surge would not have been necessary had the war been handled competently from the beginning.
The war in Afghanistan waged against the Taliban, which had provided Osama bin Laden with sanctuary, was similarly mishandled. Once again, too few troops were sent to do too big a job. Good managers know how to make choices. Bush not only chose wrongly when he gave Iraq precedence over Afghanistan, but he chose not to choose at all when he thought both wars could be fought on the cheap - no draft, no tax hike, no sacrifice from the general public.
The Bush Institute of Management Failure should also look into how the administration was so late in noticing that the country was slipping into a profound recession. This should be coupled with a look-see at how Bush's various appointees failed to regulate the banking, insurance, housing and mortgage industries. (Have I mentioned Hurricane Katrina and "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job?" No? Just as well.)
Bush and his aides ought to devote time to what went wrong at the Justice Department. It was politicized and mismanaged to the point where even the Senate noticed. U.S. attorneys apparently had to pass political muster, the Constitution was interpreted along monarchical lines, and somehow the trial of Ted Stevens was so botched that his conviction was thrown out. Alberto Gonzales, a Bush crony, was supervised from the White House by Harriet Miers, an old Bush friend whose qualification for the job was that she was an old Bush friend.
If Bush and his aides do get around to politics, it is my fondest wish that they ask the always voluble Karl Rove - that latter-day Mark Hanna who was going to create a Republican era to last 30 or 40 years - what happened. Rove has reduced the Republican Party to himself, Rush Limbaugh and a scattering of red ties in Congress that only he can name. He has so very much to teach us.
Bush's presidency - rich in lessons - should keep everyone occupied deep into the night. If it's not too late - and especially for those already critical of Barack Obama - let me suggest dessert.
How's humble pie?
»
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Comments
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If only Smedley D. Butler
Fri, 04/17/2009 - 01:49 — J L G (not verified)
If only Smedley D. Butler were here to give an updated assessment on the benefactors of the most recent two wars and this past presidency. The U.S. Marine Corps General did a fabulous job illuminating the corruption and "benefits" of wars of the 19th and early 20th century in War is a Racket. Read it and weep. Those who say, "Follow the money," are right on target. That is where you'll find the criminals and fat-cats who found fertile fields in the Bush-Cheney years.
A proverb I first heard some
Thu, 04/16/2009 - 13:18 — bogi666 (not verified)
A proverb I first heard some 40 years ago "NEVER HIRE A HARVARD M.B.A." FOR WHICH BUSH SHOULD BE THE POSTER BOY.Bush had his epiphany to be President in 1984 while watching a matinee showing of a science fiction movie. This was in his drugging/drinking days so who knows what hallucination he was having then. One of the things that are taught in business school is contingency planning should something go wrong with a project. Another is budgeting. Bush must have either missed those classes or was stoned or both.
Follow the leader and refuse
Thu, 04/16/2009 - 09:48 — Anonymous (not verified)
Follow the leader and refuse to prosecute anyone for anything. Fair is fair.
We need desperately to set
Thu, 04/16/2009 - 09:23 — Anonymous (not verified)
We need desperately to set up a citizens court. We need to clean house, both of them. Mr. Dejanjuk is still being persecuted after 60 years. Why not our terribles now? Let's not wait 60 years. If Bush attacked Israel we would have him hung by now.
Trashing Bush are we? Why
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 22:10 — Americonned (not verified)
Trashing Bush are we? Why not blame ourselves and do something about it? We can't wait for the government to do anything. We have to force they're hand. A letter and phone call campaign would do some good. Not just voting on line. Actually give them physical evidence that we are not happy. Bother them until they bother Bush.
WTC 7. All the answers are
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 13:07 — mysterioso (not verified)
WTC 7. All the answers are there but nobody's looking. Why is that?
You Will NEVER get such an
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 12:01 — Anonymous (not verified)
You Will NEVER get such an honest review of the BuSh Administration as long as almost all Media in America is now owned and operated by just a few huge Corporations...
A WAR-FOR-PROFIT IS MASS
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 07:21 — Always Ask WHY (not verified)
A WAR-FOR-PROFIT IS MASS MURDER. Forget "failure." The Bush Mafia goals were achieved with great success! They attained all they intended: mass controlled chaos, looting of the U.S. Treasury, dividing up the Iraqi oil fields among "friends", with the added bonus of perverted and depraved sexual torture, discussed in great in the Oval Officein, I'm sure, "satisfying", detail. They twisted minds with lying to an extent never known in the history of a U.S. president and vice-president and minions. Mass murder, torture, lies, treason, fraud. SICK, TWISTED, PERVERTED, INDIFFERENT TO HUMAN LIFE. THESE PEOPLE DESERVE TO ROT IN PRISON FOR THE REST OF THEIR NATURAL LIVES... UNDER A MICROSCOPE OF PSYCHIATRISTS IN ORDER TO DETERMINE HOW HUMAN BEINGS BECOME SO DETACHED AND DEPRAVED.
It should be studied.
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 05:49 — Anonymous (not verified)
It should be studied. Intensely. Senator John Kyl (Az) sent a letter to the NY Times recently espousing most of the tax and economic programs imposed by Bush II. Apparently the GOP has not learned anything in the last 28 years.
MISSION
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 05:24 — jstuv (not verified)
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! The Bush/Chaney Administration was able to succeed where Osama bin Laden failed. Should the crimes of treason, by the Bush/Chaney Administration, be overlooked, then these crimes of high treason will be repeated in future administrations.
The Allies conducted the Nürenberg Trials (in 1945 to 1949) for several reasons: A) To make aware that these crimes were actually committed,
B) To examine HOW these crimes were able to be committed,
C) Who committed these crimes and
D) To punish the criminals. Should the guilty not be punished, then, their Criminal Acts would be absolved and could easily be repeated. There would not be any justice. “The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government.”
Should the Bush/Chaney Administration (alleged) criminals not be prosecuted, not be brought to trial and not found guilty, then, like the Ronald Reagan Republican group, they will be glorified, deified and praised. With ALL the evidence available: Eyewitnesses, Documents, Dead Bodies, Remnants of Death Camps, Newsreel clips, piles of clothes, piles of shoes, piles of hair, piles of eyeglasses, piles of gold teeth –COLD HARD EVIDENCE-, there are Holocaust Deniers being celebrated, glorified and believed.
So, too, these (alleged) criminals will be praised and glorified for future generations. We will have not have learned from history –and the American society will repeat this debacle. With ALL the evidence available: Eyewitnesses, Documents, Dead Bodies, Remnants of Death Camps, Newsreel clips, piles of clothes, piles of shoes, piles of hair, piles of eyeglasses, piles of gold teeth –COLD HARD EVIDENCE-, there are Holocaust Deniers being celebrated, glorified and believed. So, too, these (alleged) criminals will be praised and glorified for future generations. We will have not have learned from history –and the American society will repeat this debacle.
Thank you for an excellent
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 04:59 — JustinaForJustice (not verified)
Thank you for an excellent synopsis of the most glaring errors of the Bush-Cheney regime, although you left out Bush's systematic demolition of our tri-partite constitutional government, wherein our Congress and Courts were denuded of oversight authority. The failure to investigate and prosecute the criminals involved in the Iran-Contra scandal left the main evil doers free to re-appear and carry on with their nefarious schemes as high officials in the Bush-Cheney administration. We must learn from that failure and thoroughly investigate and clean out the neo-fascists in the Bush-Cheney administration so they can never re-appear to damage the United States again. The U.S. has been totally shamed in the eyes of the world and in those of its citizens. To restore any semblance of honor, we must investigate and prosecute all the criminals in the Bush-Cheney administration, including Bush and Cheney.
The sad part about this
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 02:07 — Anonymous (not verified)
The sad part about this article is that even in this day and age; Mr Cohen still believes that if the war had been prosecuted better, it would have all been OK. Never mind that the rationale was flawed from the beginning. If you are going to invade and kill people, you should do it right!
Let me tell you from a non
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 01:40 — Dauphin Ermite (not verified)
Let me tell you from a non american perspective, Bush's presidency has not been the high point of USA's moral and political preeminence in the world. I am severely understating... And when one adds Cheney to the equation, the word "disgust" is a mild one. Many of my friends in the political and social spheres are asking why Bush and Cheney are not presently prosecuted for crimes of war and crimes of desecration of democracy and human rights. No we are not wobling at the knees, Chuck, just using a bit of our two neurones...
So when do we start
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 01:34 — Jonathan Mitchell (not verified)
So when do we start prosecuting these monsters to erase their dangerous precedent from the blackboard of U.S. history? (Roaring silence from the Obama administration...)
All was made possible by
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 01:00 — PortArnie (not verified)
All was made possible by 9/11 maybe that should be investigated now or is this institude formed to prevent that!
Bankruptcies 'R' US Bush,
Wed, 04/15/2009 - 00:40 — Anonymous (not verified)
Bankruptcies 'R' US Bush, the lying fool who led every company he was involved with into bankruptcy, bailed out in the past by his partners who financed Al-Queda, his criminal empire finally busted the entire economy with its trickle down corruption. Suck this worm into a jail cell and regain the respect of the thinking world.
This article has listed the
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 22:52 — Devon Noll, MPA (not verified)
This article has listed the faults of the Bush Administration, in part, but something else that was not addressed should give us all pause. Bush and his cadre of thieves, liars, and rogues who would have had a dictatorship in place if not for a failed emergency are once again meeting in private to plan - a policy institute! Let's get a clue here - these guys want to plan policy agendas for the likes of Cantor et al, and how to rebuild the Republican policies in a new government. They will be working long and hard to complete what they started in 2000 and they have the money, the media, and the people to succeed again. This group should be watched very carefully, see who they work with, and be very careful about dismissing them. This group is not done, and as I said when Miers, Rove, and Gonzalez left DC, they have fallen below media radar for a long time now, which means that many things are afoot that may not be quite so noticeable now because of Bush's economic debacle and the media's penchant for distraction. Be very, very careful!
NYCartist is right! There
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 22:33 — Anonymous (not verified)
NYCartist is right! There were no failures as far as any of the gang of escapees from hell is concerned - they stole 10 trillion dollars from the world and we are now witnessing the aggrandizement of it all - like a statue to Satan in Hell. Instead, can we quickly set up a new commando unit to quickly put bars on all the doors and windows of that monstrosity while they are all in there admiring their killing spree and then kinda loose the keys? Please... pretty please
The Bush administration was
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 22:19 — Anonymous (not verified)
The Bush administration was a success - in the same way Tony Soprano was a success when he took over his friend's sporting goods store and busted it out for the benefit of himself and his crew. We keep looking at the mess Bush left behind while we really need to look for all those who benefited from this enterprise, understand what they did, how they did it and set up safeguards to keep anyone from being able to do this again.
As long as not ONE tax
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 22:14 — Anonymous (not verified)
As long as not ONE tax dollar is spent on it, let them build their monument to corruption and stupidity. It will make good study for future generations. The Rove propaganda gallery should be especially interesting.
Let's NOT move on! Bush
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 21:50 — Robert B. (not verified)
Let's NOT move on! Bush should be handed over to the International Criminal Court ASAP.
The “Decider” and
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 21:15 — Anonymous (not verified)
The “Decider” and friends should use the meeting to systematize their management experiences and draw the lessons learned on the best and more cost effective management strategies to....shot up the unemployment, foreclosures and, bankruptcies rates; increase environmental vulnerabilities, reach higher poverty rates; “left behind” more children without health benefits, provide fatter paychecks for CEOs to reward incompetence, “improve” political corruption, claim secrecy privileges and more to hide from the people (who are supposed to be informed) enhance violation of human rights and international law, make “rapid lousy assessment” and response to Katrina, obtain high disapproval level, and more and more nationally and internationally. That's a heck of management! Worth a book for the Nobel Prize.
>Thankya f'r y'r support!
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 21:08 — Anonymous (not verified)
>Thankya f'r y'r support! My institute is gonna be diff'rent, it's gonna have a barbecue pit in the back, and a sub-basement where we're gonna prototype the tortures of a future policy. Some folks may be lookin' for that pointy headed progressive stuff, well that will not be part of the plan of my policy institute. It's gonna be on 40 acres, on a pastoral type setting with lots of meadows where Dick Cheney can blast away at skeet and various folks he don't like.
I wonder if Bush can yet
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 21:03 — Anonymous (not verified)
I wonder if Bush can yet name any of his mistakes!
Trashing Bush was great
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 20:58 — Anonymous (not verified)
Trashing Bush was great sport while he was in office. Now it's pointless. Lets move on, get the war crimes trial going, and put this where it belongs: in our history books under the chapter titled Mistakes We Should Avoid Repeating. In fact, lets make it a required course for all students. America Is Not Infallible 101.
This article is pussing
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 19:46 — Anonymous (not verified)
This article is pussing footing! not one word about how the war was an illegal invasion!!
Let's hope America remembers
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 18:37 — Anonymous (not verified)
Let's hope America remembers this the next time we get the urge to put a born-again former-alcoholic party-frat boy whose military and business accomplishments consist mainly of getting preferential treatment from daddy's friends in charge.
It is beyond the scope of
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 17:58 — Mg (not verified)
It is beyond the scope of George W. Bush to actually make sense of all that he has done, and probably will do. From our perspective on this side of his face, it doesn't look too good.
Bush expanded Pres. powers,
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 17:41 — NYCartist (not verified)
Bush expanded Pres. powers, gave cronies jobs, got funding for 2 wars, tax cuts for his friends...This is failure?
Or, America could have
Tue, 04/14/2009 - 17:23 — Anonymous (not verified)
Or, America could have listened to the millions of people here and abroad who knew that the invasion of Iraq was designed to steal their oil, and not done it at all.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Challenging Negative Campaign against Ethiopia
Dear Patriotic Global Citizens and Friends of Ethiopia
Re: Making Genocide Watch accountable and transparent towards managing allegation with verifiable facts
The assumption and premise of this article is questionable.
I found this posting rather interesting as it begins with the notion that any thing that private groups such as Genocide Watch and Human Rights watch say and write is the word of God. No where does it ask for evidence to the allegations.
It alleges that the response that the Ethiopian government provided more or less saying bring the facts or shut up is not acceptable.
Where is the facts for the allegations?
Imagine, a group that said nothing when the real genocide took place in Africa under White Ian Smith and Botha in Southern Africa or more recently in Congo where over 6 million people perished, feels it has a god given divine authority to allege a serious crime against the Ethiopian people and when asked to account, come up with nothing factual but another set of allegations.
Is Genocide Watch a fair institution or a propaganda tool
Have we seen Genocide watch reporting on the Shock and Awe Campaign in Irag or here in Guantano bay about the shocking revelations of Bush Administration criminal activities.
The focus on emerging nations alone is quite obvious
Why is this group so focused only on developing countries and does not report on other critical issues. Most importantly, why does it feel that it has the moral authority when it is writing a letter to an organization based of all places in Switzerland, a country that collaborated with Nazi Genocide and now the mother of all Economic Genocide Tax Shelter Government that literally writes its budget with looted money from 6 million Jews that perished in the German Genocide and 1.1 Billion African poor.
Imagine an Ethiopian Government being asked to present its leaders to International Criminal Court based in Italy, a country that has not as of yet accounted for its Genocidal activity against Ethiopians in 1896 when it was defeatedand in 1925 when it cluster bombed Ethiopians like America did to the Japanese.
Who is the cause of Genocide?
Imagine, expecting Ethiopians will ever allow that. May be to Belosconi and never to Meles Zenawi. So, comes the idiotic Genoricde Watch expecting Ethiopians to be judged by institutions run by those who ran the most henious Genocide against their fathers and grand fathers and the country that looted the Emeperos'sd savings and money put aside for times of crisis. The Swiss banks and Government that now houses this so called Human Rights Group. It is so offensive.
Imagine the Swiss Government judging on Economic Genocide and Grey List of OECD. Ask President Obama, PMs Gordon Brown and PM Meles Zenawi how they intend to get their looted money back.
The oly government in history, that has allowed governance and self determination based on language and ethnic group is now being accused as being genocidal of the very group that they have devolved power to.
I have interviewed the current Administrator of Gambella who was the security chief during the previous regime and knows first hand that the so called genocide on the Annuak was perpetuated
by the previous appointee of the Military Marxist Communist regime.
The case has been investigated by Ethiopian parliament and this group that calls itself is so incompetent it is making its allegation based by a group led by the same former Communist regime representatives here in Canada and the USA.
Can we demand transparency and accountability from Genocide Watch or their handlers?
Balance is missing grossly.
Most of the write up in this article is so one sided and unfortunately negative one cannot go and discuss every detail. It is like the Republicans who looted the US economy for 8 years with out any accountability now demonstrating on Tax Return day with Tea bags saying Taxed Enough Already and sent to Tax Shelters.. To late Barack our money is sheltered in Toxic Assets and Switzerland.
Is Genocide Watch part of the Fox Network of the Australian Group?
Ofcourse in World of Fomer Catholic Priest turned propaganda chief Hannities of this world, they have the facts and all of us are fools.
The reports from CIA and Bush Administration Economic and Military expenditures state otherwise. But Fox is busy trying to steal the sheep. Unfortunately, this writer is no better than the foolish Hanni ties of the Right Wing propaganda.
The facts are by far different that what this writer tries to paint. Ethiopia is the island of democracy and good governance in a sea of piracy, genocide in Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia and Kenya.
The Ethiopian government has not done half the crimes of the Bush administration who carpet bombed Iraq and continues to abuse the American Citizens with unwarranted communication interference.
So, Have you seen Genocide watch reporting on Europe, North America, Cuba and Latin America.
I believe we need to have transparency and accountability on at all levels of our lives. The Ethiopian government like the Bush and Obama Governments have to be made accountable with facts and not with fantasy.
Dr B
WHO WE ARE
Countries at the Crossroads is an annual survey of governance in 60 strategically important countries that are at a critical turning point in determining their political future. Freedom House is an independent private organization supporting the expansion of freedom throughout the world. Click here to learn more.
2007 REPORTS
Algeria
Angola
Bangladesh
Bhutan
Bolivia
Burkina Faso
China
Colombia
Ecuador
Egypt
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Honduras
Iran
Laos
Libya
Mauritania
Mozambique
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Russia
Rwanda
Swaziland
Syria
Tajikistan
Thailand
Tunisia
Turkey
Zambia
BLOGROLL
World Bank Governance Matters
The Latin Americanist
The Kaufmann Governance Post
Plan Colombia and Beyond
Oil Wars
NED Democracy Digest
Marc Lynch
Informed Comment: Global Affairs Blog
Harvard International Review Blog
Global Voices Online
« A Tale of Two Southeast Asian States | Main
April 17, 2009
Ethiopia Seals the Lid on Ethnic Rights
Recently, the Ethiopian government scoffed at Genocide Watch’s request that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees investigate human rights violations in the country. Genocide Watch primarily voiced its concern over the government’s involvement in atrocities committed against members of the Anuak ethnic group in 2005. The organization has concluded that the crimes committed against this group fit the definition of genocide. The Ethiopian government, in response, called the allegations “unfounded, fabricated lies.”
This turn of events is indicative of the increasingly adverse human rights situation in the country. The government’s general level of respect for civil liberties has been spiraling downward. More particularly, the rights of several of Ethiopia’s myriad ethnic groups have been jeopardized. The deplorable state of affairs has been brought about by both the government’s active undermining of minority protections and its failure to respond to allegations of human rights violations.
Ethiopia is populated by at least 80 different ethnic groups. The Oromo people, who make up 40-45% of the population, are the largest group, followed by the Amhara, who make up 25% of the population. The country’s political scene has traditionally been dominated by the Amhara people. More recently, however, the Tigray group has become the most powerful political entity. The Tigray, who make up less than 10% of Ethiopia’s population, exert their influence through the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a party which constitutes the nucleus of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (ERPRDF). Other important groups include the Oromo and Somali groups, who have traditionally been the targets of extensive persecution.
As the 2007 Countries at the Crossroads report notes, the EPRDF government made a concerted effort to respect ethnic rights in the country at the outset of its rule. When it came to power in 1991, the EPRDF nominally responded to the injustices suffered by the majority of the country’s ethnic communities. In the constitution drafted in 1995, the EPRDF government granted increased regional autonomy to various groups by creating a federal system based upon ethnic lines. It also incorporated these ethnic groups into the government by including their respective parties within the ruling coalition. In addition, the government made seemingly positive strides toward adopting good governance practices on such pressing issues as poverty and food insecurity.
Unfortunately, the positive trend towards respecting ethnic rights soon stalled out and then reversed itself. The government squeezed out all parties but the TPLF and its allies from the ruling coalition. In addition, violence and discrimination against ethnic groups resumed. While the human rights situation was unfortunate, the Ethiopian government seemed to remain committed to adopting reforms aimed at economic and political development well into this decade.
Nevertheless, by the 2005 elections, the hopes that technocratic governance improvements might be accompanied by further democratization had been dashed. During the run-up to the elections, the Ethiopian government became engaged in a campaign to intimidate and restrict the activities of opposition members. This political targeting was partially ethnic in nature. The All Ethiopian Unity Party, the main political party of the Amhara people, comprises an influential component of the country’s main opposition movement. The opposition, which is made up of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy and the United Ethiopian democratic Forces, campaigned for greater power and respect for the country’s different ethnic groups. Throughout this period, members of the opposition were harassed, arrested, and killed.
Persecution of this sort has continued into the present. A report released by the UN committee responsible for implementing the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination reported that government agents including military officials and police officers had committed crimes against minority groups including the Anuak and the Oromo. Human Rights Watch has made similar claims.
Most notably, it alleged that Ethiopian security forces have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against ethnic Somalis residing in the Ogaden region. According to HRW, the most intense persecution took place in 2007, when Ethiopian troops tortured and raped innocent Somali civilians. In addition, HRW has echoed Genocide Watch’s accusation that heinous crimes were committed against the Anuak communities in the Gambella region from 2003-2005. In addition to these more extreme examples, the Minority Rights Group International has reported that the level of representation of minority groups at the government level remains unsatisfactory.
Due to its ever clearer involvement in the persecution of minority groups, the government’s response to this situation has been extremely lackluster. The Ethiopian government has failed to investigate allegations of discrimination and crimes; indeed, official government policy with regards to human rights abuses consists almost exclusively of denying all charges or turning a deaf ear. The fact that the country has refused to grant the requests of several international human rights organizations to investigate the situation on the ground has only lent credence to the allegations.
In some cases, the Ethiopian government has felt compelled to counter the aforementioned NGO reports. For example, the government urged the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission to publish a report on the situation in the Ogaden region.Unfortunately, however, this commission is by no means an independent entity. As the 2007 Crossroads report maintains, it is largely a government tool and is given little actual authority to respond to violations. That being the case, the report’s finding that no human rights violations were committed in the region is both unsurprising and extremely suspect. This general failure to address the human rights crisis has perpetuated a strong culture of impunity in the country.
Given this situation, the onus of responding to and raising the alarm about the steady stream of violations has largely fallen on human rights organizations operating both within and outside of Ethiopia. However, the government has recently taken steps to control the activities of NGOs. On January 6, the Ethiopian parliament passed new regulations it claims are necessary in order to provide a favorable legal framework and environment for NGOs in the country.
Nevertheless, the new law will bring decidedly negative consequences for ethnic rights, not to mention its freedom of association and assembly implications. The law labels as “foreign” any organization that receives over 10% of its funding from outside of Ethiopia. Most alarmingly, it goes on to prohibit these “foreign” NGOs from engaging in human rights and governance work. As a recent Human Rights Watch report notes, this law will be especially damaging due to the fact that there are very few organizations that engage in human rights work in Ethiopia and even fewer that will be able to qualify as “domestic” under the new law. Tragically, this law’s implementation may effectively stifle Ethiopia’s few remaining ethnic rights watchdogs.
As the domestic environment becomes more repressive, the role of international actors will become critical. While they may be unable to investigate violations on the ground, it will remain the responsibility of international human rights organizations to raise awareness about the crisis in Ethiopia and to continue petitioning international organizations such as the UN to respond to the issue. NGOs must continue to lobby world powers including the United States and the EU to speak out against Ethiopia’s abuses and provide support to human rights defenders within the country. Due to the fact that Ethiopia is highly dependent on foreign assistance to combat such daunting challenges as rampant poverty, food shortages, and a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, international pressure of this sort could bear more fruit than pressure on regimes that are already more internationally isolated.
Photo Credit: Flickr user aheavens
Posted at 02:04 PM in Africa, Human Rights, Minority Rights | Permalink
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Comments
Re: Making Genocide Watch accountable and transparent towards managing allegation with verifiable facts
The assumption and premise of this article is questionable.
I found this posting rather interesting as it begins with the notion that any thing that private groups such as Genocide Watch and Human Rights watch say and write is the word of God. No where does it ask for evidence to the allegations.
It alleges that the response that the Ethiopian government provided more or less saying bring the facts or shut up is not acceptable.
Where is tha fcts for the allegations?
Imagine, a group that said nothing when the real genocide took place in Africa under White Ian Smith and Botha in Southern Africa or more recently in Congo where over 6 million people perished, feels it has a god given divine authority to allege a serious crime against the Ethiopian people and when asked to account, come up with nothing factual but another set of allegations.
Is Genocide Watch a fair institution or a propaganda tool
Have we seen Genocide watch reporting on the Shock and Awe Campain in Irag or here in Guantano bay about the shocking revelations of Bush Administration criminal activities.
The focus on emerging nations alone is quite obvious
Why is this group so focussed only on developing countries and does not report on other critical issues. Most importantly, why does it feel that it has the moral authority when it is writing a letter to an organization based of all places in Switzerland, a country that collaborated with Nazi Genocide and now the mother of all Economic Genocide Tax Shelter Government that literally writes its budget with looted money from 6 million Jews that perished in the German Genocide and 1.1 Billion African poor.
Imagine an Ethiopian Government being asked to present its leaders to Internatonl Criminal Court based in Italy, a country that has not as of yet accounted for its Genocidal activity against Ethiopians in 1896 when it was defeatedand in 1925 when it cluster bombed Ethiopians like America did to the Japanese.
Who is the cuase of Genocide?
Imagine, expecting Ethiopians will ever allow that. May be to Belosconi and never to Meles Zenawi. So, comes the idiotic Genoricde Watch expecting EThiopians to be judged by institutions run by those who ran the most henious Genocide against their fathers and grand fathers and the country that loooted the Emeperos'sd savings and money put aside for times of crisis. The Swiss banks and Government that now houses this so called Human Rights Group. It is so offensive.
Imagine the Swiss Government judging on Economic Genocide and Grey List of OECD. Ask President Obama, PMs Gordon Brown and PM Meles Zenawi how they intend to get their looted money back.
The oly government in history, that has allowed governance and self determination based on language and ethnic group is now being accused as being genocidal of the very group that they have devolved power to.
I have interviwed the current Administrator of Gambella who was the security chief during the previous regime and knows first hand that the so called genocide on the Annuak was perpetuated
by the previous appointee of the Military Marxist Communist regime.
The case has been investigated by Ethiopian parliament and this group that calls itself is so incompetent it is making its allegation based by a group led by the same former Communist regime representatives here in Canada and the USA.
Can we demand transparency and accountability from Genocide Watch or their handlers?
Ballance is missing grossly.
Most of the write up in this article is so one sided and unfortunately negative one cannot go and discuss every detail. It is like the Republicans who looted the US economy for 8 years with out any accountability now demonstrating on Tax Return day with Tea bags saying Taxed Enough Already and sent to Tax Shelters.. To late Barack our money is sheltered in Toxic Assets and Switzerland.
Is Genocide Watch part of the Fox Network of the Australian Group?
Ofcourse in World of Fomer Catholic Priest turned propaganda chief Hannities of this world, they have the facts and all of us are fools.
The reports from CIA and Bush Administration Economic and Military expenditures state otherwise. But Fox is busy trying to steal the sheep. Unfortunately, this writer is no better than the foolish Hannities of the Right Wing propaganda.
The facts are by far different that what this writer tries to paint. Ethiopia is the island of democracy and good governance in a sea of piracy, genocide in Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia and Kenya.
The Ethiopian government has not done half the crimes of the Bush administration who carpet bombed Iraq and continues to abuse the American Citizens with unwaranted communication interference.
So, Have you seen Genocide watch reporting on Europe, North America, Cuba and Lantin America.
I believe we need to have transparency and accountability on at all levels of our lives. The Ethiopian government like the Bush and Obama Governments have to be made accountable with facts and not with fantasy.
Dr B
Re: Making Genocide Watch accountable and transparent towards managing allegation with verifiable facts
The assumption and premise of this article is questionable.
I found this posting rather interesting as it begins with the notion that any thing that private groups such as Genocide Watch and Human Rights watch say and write is the word of God. No where does it ask for evidence to the allegations.
It alleges that the response that the Ethiopian government provided more or less saying bring the facts or shut up is not acceptable.
Where is the facts for the allegations?
Imagine, a group that said nothing when the real genocide took place in Africa under White Ian Smith and Botha in Southern Africa or more recently in Congo where over 6 million people perished, feels it has a god given divine authority to allege a serious crime against the Ethiopian people and when asked to account, come up with nothing factual but another set of allegations.
Is Genocide Watch a fair institution or a propaganda tool
Have we seen Genocide watch reporting on the Shock and Awe Campaign in Irag or here in Guantano bay about the shocking revelations of Bush Administration criminal activities.
The focus on emerging nations alone is quite obvious
Why is this group so focused only on developing countries and does not report on other critical issues. Most importantly, why does it feel that it has the moral authority when it is writing a letter to an organization based of all places in Switzerland, a country that collaborated with Nazi Genocide and now the mother of all Economic Genocide Tax Shelter Government that literally writes its budget with looted money from 6 million Jews that perished in the German Genocide and 1.1 Billion African poor.
Imagine an Ethiopian Government being asked to present its leaders to International Criminal Court based in Italy, a country that has not as of yet accounted for its Genocidal activity against Ethiopians in 1896 when it was defeatedand in 1925 when it cluster bombed Ethiopians like America did to the Japanese.
Who is the cause of Genocide?
Imagine, expecting Ethiopians will ever allow that. May be to Belosconi and never to Meles Zenawi. So, comes the idiotic Genoricde Watch expecting Ethiopians to be judged by institutions run by those who ran the most henious Genocide against their fathers and grand fathers and the country that looted the Emeperos'sd savings and money put aside for times of crisis. The Swiss banks and Government that now houses this so called Human Rights Group. It is so offensive.
Imagine the Swiss Government judging on Economic Genocide and Grey List of OECD. Ask President Obama, PMs Gordon Brown and PM Meles Zenawi how they intend to get their looted money back.
The oly government in history, that has allowed governance and self determination based on language and ethnic group is now being accused as being genocidal of the very group that they have devolved power to.
I have interviewed the current Administrator of Gambella who was the security chief during the previous regime and knows first hand that the so called genocide on the Annuak was perpetuated
by the previous appointee of the Military Marxist Communist regime.
The case has been investigated by Ethiopian parliament and this group that calls itself is so incompetent it is making its allegation based by a group led by the same former Communist regime representatives here in Canada and the USA.
Can we demand transparency and accountability from Genocide Watch or their handlers?
Balance is missing grossly.
Most of the write up in this article is so one sided and unfortunately negative one cannot go and discuss every detail. It is like the Republicans who looted the US economy for 8 years with out any accountability now demonstrating on Tax Return day with Tea bags saying Taxed Enough Already and sent to Tax Shelters.. To late Barack our money is sheltered in Toxic Assets and Switzerland.
Is Genocide Watch part of the Fox Network of the Australian Group?
Ofcourse in World of Fomer Catholic Priest turned propaganda chief Hannities of this world, they have the facts and all of us are fools.
The reports from CIA and Bush Administration Economic and Military expenditures state otherwise. But Fox is busy trying to steal the sheep. Unfortunately, this writer is no better than the foolish Hanni ties of the Right Wing propaganda.
The facts are by far different that what this writer tries to paint. Ethiopia is the island of democracy and good governance in a sea of piracy, genocide in Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia and Kenya.
The Ethiopian government has not done half the crimes of the Bush administration who carpet bombed Iraq and continues to abuse the American Citizens with unwarranted communication interference.
So, Have you seen Genocide watch reporting on Europe, North America, Cuba and Latin America.
I believe we need to have transparency and accountability on at all levels of our lives. The Ethiopian government like the Bush and Obama Governments have to be made accountable with facts and not with fantasy.
Dr B
WHO WE ARE
Countries at the Crossroads is an annual survey of governance in 60 strategically important countries that are at a critical turning point in determining their political future. Freedom House is an independent private organization supporting the expansion of freedom throughout the world. Click here to learn more.
2007 REPORTS
Algeria
Angola
Bangladesh
Bhutan
Bolivia
Burkina Faso
China
Colombia
Ecuador
Egypt
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Honduras
Iran
Laos
Libya
Mauritania
Mozambique
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Russia
Rwanda
Swaziland
Syria
Tajikistan
Thailand
Tunisia
Turkey
Zambia
BLOGROLL
World Bank Governance Matters
The Latin Americanist
The Kaufmann Governance Post
Plan Colombia and Beyond
Oil Wars
NED Democracy Digest
Marc Lynch
Informed Comment: Global Affairs Blog
Harvard International Review Blog
Global Voices Online
« A Tale of Two Southeast Asian States | Main
April 17, 2009
Ethiopia Seals the Lid on Ethnic Rights
Recently, the Ethiopian government scoffed at Genocide Watch’s request that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees investigate human rights violations in the country. Genocide Watch primarily voiced its concern over the government’s involvement in atrocities committed against members of the Anuak ethnic group in 2005. The organization has concluded that the crimes committed against this group fit the definition of genocide. The Ethiopian government, in response, called the allegations “unfounded, fabricated lies.”
This turn of events is indicative of the increasingly adverse human rights situation in the country. The government’s general level of respect for civil liberties has been spiraling downward. More particularly, the rights of several of Ethiopia’s myriad ethnic groups have been jeopardized. The deplorable state of affairs has been brought about by both the government’s active undermining of minority protections and its failure to respond to allegations of human rights violations.
Ethiopia is populated by at least 80 different ethnic groups. The Oromo people, who make up 40-45% of the population, are the largest group, followed by the Amhara, who make up 25% of the population. The country’s political scene has traditionally been dominated by the Amhara people. More recently, however, the Tigray group has become the most powerful political entity. The Tigray, who make up less than 10% of Ethiopia’s population, exert their influence through the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a party which constitutes the nucleus of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (ERPRDF). Other important groups include the Oromo and Somali groups, who have traditionally been the targets of extensive persecution.
As the 2007 Countries at the Crossroads report notes, the EPRDF government made a concerted effort to respect ethnic rights in the country at the outset of its rule. When it came to power in 1991, the EPRDF nominally responded to the injustices suffered by the majority of the country’s ethnic communities. In the constitution drafted in 1995, the EPRDF government granted increased regional autonomy to various groups by creating a federal system based upon ethnic lines. It also incorporated these ethnic groups into the government by including their respective parties within the ruling coalition. In addition, the government made seemingly positive strides toward adopting good governance practices on such pressing issues as poverty and food insecurity.
Unfortunately, the positive trend towards respecting ethnic rights soon stalled out and then reversed itself. The government squeezed out all parties but the TPLF and its allies from the ruling coalition. In addition, violence and discrimination against ethnic groups resumed. While the human rights situation was unfortunate, the Ethiopian government seemed to remain committed to adopting reforms aimed at economic and political development well into this decade.
Nevertheless, by the 2005 elections, the hopes that technocratic governance improvements might be accompanied by further democratization had been dashed. During the run-up to the elections, the Ethiopian government became engaged in a campaign to intimidate and restrict the activities of opposition members. This political targeting was partially ethnic in nature. The All Ethiopian Unity Party, the main political party of the Amhara people, comprises an influential component of the country’s main opposition movement. The opposition, which is made up of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy and the United Ethiopian democratic Forces, campaigned for greater power and respect for the country’s different ethnic groups. Throughout this period, members of the opposition were harassed, arrested, and killed.
Persecution of this sort has continued into the present. A report released by the UN committee responsible for implementing the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination reported that government agents including military officials and police officers had committed crimes against minority groups including the Anuak and the Oromo. Human Rights Watch has made similar claims.
Most notably, it alleged that Ethiopian security forces have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against ethnic Somalis residing in the Ogaden region. According to HRW, the most intense persecution took place in 2007, when Ethiopian troops tortured and raped innocent Somali civilians. In addition, HRW has echoed Genocide Watch’s accusation that heinous crimes were committed against the Anuak communities in the Gambella region from 2003-2005. In addition to these more extreme examples, the Minority Rights Group International has reported that the level of representation of minority groups at the government level remains unsatisfactory.
Due to its ever clearer involvement in the persecution of minority groups, the government’s response to this situation has been extremely lackluster. The Ethiopian government has failed to investigate allegations of discrimination and crimes; indeed, official government policy with regards to human rights abuses consists almost exclusively of denying all charges or turning a deaf ear. The fact that the country has refused to grant the requests of several international human rights organizations to investigate the situation on the ground has only lent credence to the allegations.
In some cases, the Ethiopian government has felt compelled to counter the aforementioned NGO reports. For example, the government urged the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission to publish a report on the situation in the Ogaden region.Unfortunately, however, this commission is by no means an independent entity. As the 2007 Crossroads report maintains, it is largely a government tool and is given little actual authority to respond to violations. That being the case, the report’s finding that no human rights violations were committed in the region is both unsurprising and extremely suspect. This general failure to address the human rights crisis has perpetuated a strong culture of impunity in the country.
Given this situation, the onus of responding to and raising the alarm about the steady stream of violations has largely fallen on human rights organizations operating both within and outside of Ethiopia. However, the government has recently taken steps to control the activities of NGOs. On January 6, the Ethiopian parliament passed new regulations it claims are necessary in order to provide a favorable legal framework and environment for NGOs in the country.
Nevertheless, the new law will bring decidedly negative consequences for ethnic rights, not to mention its freedom of association and assembly implications. The law labels as “foreign” any organization that receives over 10% of its funding from outside of Ethiopia. Most alarmingly, it goes on to prohibit these “foreign” NGOs from engaging in human rights and governance work. As a recent Human Rights Watch report notes, this law will be especially damaging due to the fact that there are very few organizations that engage in human rights work in Ethiopia and even fewer that will be able to qualify as “domestic” under the new law. Tragically, this law’s implementation may effectively stifle Ethiopia’s few remaining ethnic rights watchdogs.
As the domestic environment becomes more repressive, the role of international actors will become critical. While they may be unable to investigate violations on the ground, it will remain the responsibility of international human rights organizations to raise awareness about the crisis in Ethiopia and to continue petitioning international organizations such as the UN to respond to the issue. NGOs must continue to lobby world powers including the United States and the EU to speak out against Ethiopia’s abuses and provide support to human rights defenders within the country. Due to the fact that Ethiopia is highly dependent on foreign assistance to combat such daunting challenges as rampant poverty, food shortages, and a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, international pressure of this sort could bear more fruit than pressure on regimes that are already more internationally isolated.
Photo Credit: Flickr user aheavens
Posted at 02:04 PM in Africa, Human Rights, Minority Rights | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00e54ee01e87883401157026a2be970b
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Ethiopia Seals the Lid on Ethnic Rights:
Comments
Re: Making Genocide Watch accountable and transparent towards managing allegation with verifiable facts
The assumption and premise of this article is questionable.
I found this posting rather interesting as it begins with the notion that any thing that private groups such as Genocide Watch and Human Rights watch say and write is the word of God. No where does it ask for evidence to the allegations.
It alleges that the response that the Ethiopian government provided more or less saying bring the facts or shut up is not acceptable.
Where is tha fcts for the allegations?
Imagine, a group that said nothing when the real genocide took place in Africa under White Ian Smith and Botha in Southern Africa or more recently in Congo where over 6 million people perished, feels it has a god given divine authority to allege a serious crime against the Ethiopian people and when asked to account, come up with nothing factual but another set of allegations.
Is Genocide Watch a fair institution or a propaganda tool
Have we seen Genocide watch reporting on the Shock and Awe Campain in Irag or here in Guantano bay about the shocking revelations of Bush Administration criminal activities.
The focus on emerging nations alone is quite obvious
Why is this group so focussed only on developing countries and does not report on other critical issues. Most importantly, why does it feel that it has the moral authority when it is writing a letter to an organization based of all places in Switzerland, a country that collaborated with Nazi Genocide and now the mother of all Economic Genocide Tax Shelter Government that literally writes its budget with looted money from 6 million Jews that perished in the German Genocide and 1.1 Billion African poor.
Imagine an Ethiopian Government being asked to present its leaders to Internatonl Criminal Court based in Italy, a country that has not as of yet accounted for its Genocidal activity against Ethiopians in 1896 when it was defeatedand in 1925 when it cluster bombed Ethiopians like America did to the Japanese.
Who is the cuase of Genocide?
Imagine, expecting Ethiopians will ever allow that. May be to Belosconi and never to Meles Zenawi. So, comes the idiotic Genoricde Watch expecting EThiopians to be judged by institutions run by those who ran the most henious Genocide against their fathers and grand fathers and the country that loooted the Emeperos'sd savings and money put aside for times of crisis. The Swiss banks and Government that now houses this so called Human Rights Group. It is so offensive.
Imagine the Swiss Government judging on Economic Genocide and Grey List of OECD. Ask President Obama, PMs Gordon Brown and PM Meles Zenawi how they intend to get their looted money back.
The oly government in history, that has allowed governance and self determination based on language and ethnic group is now being accused as being genocidal of the very group that they have devolved power to.
I have interviwed the current Administrator of Gambella who was the security chief during the previous regime and knows first hand that the so called genocide on the Annuak was perpetuated
by the previous appointee of the Military Marxist Communist regime.
The case has been investigated by Ethiopian parliament and this group that calls itself is so incompetent it is making its allegation based by a group led by the same former Communist regime representatives here in Canada and the USA.
Can we demand transparency and accountability from Genocide Watch or their handlers?
Ballance is missing grossly.
Most of the write up in this article is so one sided and unfortunately negative one cannot go and discuss every detail. It is like the Republicans who looted the US economy for 8 years with out any accountability now demonstrating on Tax Return day with Tea bags saying Taxed Enough Already and sent to Tax Shelters.. To late Barack our money is sheltered in Toxic Assets and Switzerland.
Is Genocide Watch part of the Fox Network of the Australian Group?
Ofcourse in World of Fomer Catholic Priest turned propaganda chief Hannities of this world, they have the facts and all of us are fools.
The reports from CIA and Bush Administration Economic and Military expenditures state otherwise. But Fox is busy trying to steal the sheep. Unfortunately, this writer is no better than the foolish Hannities of the Right Wing propaganda.
The facts are by far different that what this writer tries to paint. Ethiopia is the island of democracy and good governance in a sea of piracy, genocide in Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia and Kenya.
The Ethiopian government has not done half the crimes of the Bush administration who carpet bombed Iraq and continues to abuse the American Citizens with unwaranted communication interference.
So, Have you seen Genocide watch reporting on Europe, North America, Cuba and Lantin America.
I believe we need to have transparency and accountability on at all levels of our lives. The Ethiopian government like the Bush and Obama Governments have to be made accountable with facts and not with fantasy.
Dr B
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
HIM Haile Selassie I Biography: A house built on a rock is the theme of President Brack Obama's Speech at Georgetown University on 14 April 2009
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
“The House Upon a Rock”
The past three months have seem a storm of activity from the White House, with initiatives on housing, the markets, the auto industry, small businesses, international financial cooperation, and job creation through the Recovery Act. Today the President made it his central purpose of to explain the vision that has served as the foundation for every major initiative on the economy thus far:
So today, I want to step back for a moment and explain our strategy as clearly as I can. This is going to be prose, and not poetry. I want to talk about what we've done, why we've done it, and what we have left to do. I want to update you on the progress we've made, but I also want to be honest about the pitfalls that may still lie ahead.
Most of all, I want every American to know that each action we take and each policy we pursue is driven by a larger vision of America's future -- a future where sustained economic growth creates good jobs and rising incomes; a future where prosperity is fueled not by excessive debt, or reckless speculation, or fleeting profits, but is instead built by skilled, productive workers, by sound investments that will spread opportunity at home and allow this nation to lead the world in the technologies and the innovation and discoveries that will shape the 21st century. That's the America I see. That's the America that Georgetown is preparing so many of you for. That is the future that I know that we can have.
He explained that in order to understand where we have to go from here, we also have to understand how we got here:
Now, this is when the crisis spread from Wall Street to Main Street. After all, the ability to get a loan is how you finance the purchase of everything from a home to a car to, as you all know very well, a college education. It's how stores stock their shelves, and farms buy equipment, and businesses make payroll. So when banks stopped lending money, businesses started laying off workers. When laid-off workers had less money to spend, businesses were forced to lay off even more workers. When people couldn't get a car loan, a bad situation at the auto companies became even worse. When people couldn't get home loans, the crisis in the housing market only deepened. Because the infected securities were being traded worldwide and other nations also had weak regulations, this recession soon became global. And when other nations can't afford to buy our goods, it slows our economy even further.
So this is the situation, the downward spiral that we confronted on the day that we took office. So our most urgent task has been to clear away the wreckage, repair the immediate damage to the economy, and do everything we can to prevent a larger collapse. And since the problems we face are all working off each other to feed a vicious economic downturn, we've had no choice but to attack all fronts of our economic crisis simultaneously.
The President spoke at length addressing a sentiment he said he hears most often in letters from people across the country, namely outrage about the government support for banks teetering on failure. As he did throughout the speech, he took time to address opposing arguments and perspectives. To those who take the intuitively and emotionally understandable position that we should simply let the banks fail – "where’s my bailout?" in short – he argued that in truth a dollar in credit can have an immense multiplier effect that will produce a much greater gain in terms of jobs and the broader economy. And in turn, the failure of those banks would have a vastly disproportionate impact on every American. To those who urge the preemptive takeover of banks, "the nationalization argument" as he called it, he gave assurance that his reticence to engage in that strategy was not born of ideological rigidity or moral obligation to shareholders, but rather a belief that this strategy would cause even bigger losses for taxpayers.
Perhaps the heart of the speech was focused on the core weaknesses of the economy that led to the crisis we see now, and the pillars of the new economy the President envisions to ensure such a crisis will be kept at bay in the future:
It is simply not sustainable to have a 21st-century financial system that is governed by 20th-century rules and regulations that allowed the recklessness of a few to threaten the entire economy. It is not sustainable to have an economy where in one year, 40 percent of our corporate profits came from a financial sector that was based on inflated home prices, maxed-out credit cards, over-leveraged banks and overvalued assets. It's not sustainable to have an economy where the incomes of the top 1 percent has skyrocketed while the typical working household has seen their incomes decline by nearly $2,000. That's just not a sustainable model for long-term prosperity.
For even as too many were out there chasing ever-bigger bonuses and short-term profits over the last decade, we continued to neglect the long-term threats to our prosperity: the crushing burden that the rising cost of health care is placing on families and businesses; the failure of our education system to prepare our workers for a new age; the progress that other nations are making on clean energy industries and technologies while we -- we remain addicted to foreign oil; the growing debt that we're passing on to our children. Even after we emerge from the current recession, these challenges will still represent major obstacles that stand in the way of our success in the 21st century. So we've got a lot of work to do.
Now, there's a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells the story of two men. The first built his house on a pile of sand, and it was soon destroyed when a storm hit. But the second is known as the wise man, for when "the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock."
It was founded upon a rock. We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock. We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity -- a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest; where we consume less at home and send more exports abroad.
It's a foundation built upon five pillars that will grow our economy and make this new century another American century: Number one, new rules for Wall Street that will reward drive and innovation, not reckless risk-taking -- (applause); number two, new investments in education that will make our workforce more skilled and competitive -- (applause); number three, new investments in renewable energy and technology that will create new jobs and new industries -- (applause); number four, new investments in health care that will cut costs for families and businesses; and number five, new savings in our federal budget that will bring down the debt for future generations. (Applause.)
That's the new foundation we must build. That's our house built upon a rock. That must be our future -- and my administration's policies are designed to achieve that future.
Towards the end of his speech, he noted that in addition to the fundamental weaknesses of the economy, there is also a fundamental weakness in the political system that must be confronted. He talked about how the prospects for long-term, bold, necessary solutions often give way to 24-hour news cycles and fluctuating poll numbers.
This can’t be one of those times. The challenges are too great. The stakes are too high. I know how difficult it is for Members of Congress in both parties to grapple with some of the big decisions we face right now. It’s more than most congresses and most presidents have to deal with in a lifetime.
But we have been called to govern in extraordinary times. And that requires an extraordinary sense of responsibility – to ourselves, to the men and women who sent us here, and to the many generations whose lives will be affected for good or for ill because of what we do here.
Having been forthright about the challenges ahead, he expressed confidence: America will have that house upon the rock.
“The House Upon a Rock”
The past three months have seem a storm of activity from the White House, with initiatives on housing, the markets, the auto industry, small businesses, international financial cooperation, and job creation through the Recovery Act. Today the President made it his central purpose of to explain the vision that has served as the foundation for every major initiative on the economy thus far:
So today, I want to step back for a moment and explain our strategy as clearly as I can. This is going to be prose, and not poetry. I want to talk about what we've done, why we've done it, and what we have left to do. I want to update you on the progress we've made, but I also want to be honest about the pitfalls that may still lie ahead.
Most of all, I want every American to know that each action we take and each policy we pursue is driven by a larger vision of America's future -- a future where sustained economic growth creates good jobs and rising incomes; a future where prosperity is fueled not by excessive debt, or reckless speculation, or fleeting profits, but is instead built by skilled, productive workers, by sound investments that will spread opportunity at home and allow this nation to lead the world in the technologies and the innovation and discoveries that will shape the 21st century. That's the America I see. That's the America that Georgetown is preparing so many of you for. That is the future that I know that we can have.
He explained that in order to understand where we have to go from here, we also have to understand how we got here:
Now, this is when the crisis spread from Wall Street to Main Street. After all, the ability to get a loan is how you finance the purchase of everything from a home to a car to, as you all know very well, a college education. It's how stores stock their shelves, and farms buy equipment, and businesses make payroll. So when banks stopped lending money, businesses started laying off workers. When laid-off workers had less money to spend, businesses were forced to lay off even more workers. When people couldn't get a car loan, a bad situation at the auto companies became even worse. When people couldn't get home loans, the crisis in the housing market only deepened. Because the infected securities were being traded worldwide and other nations also had weak regulations, this recession soon became global. And when other nations can't afford to buy our goods, it slows our economy even further.
So this is the situation, the downward spiral that we confronted on the day that we took office. So our most urgent task has been to clear away the wreckage, repair the immediate damage to the economy, and do everything we can to prevent a larger collapse. And since the problems we face are all working off each other to feed a vicious economic downturn, we've had no choice but to attack all fronts of our economic crisis simultaneously.
The President spoke at length addressing a sentiment he said he hears most often in letters from people across the country, namely outrage about the government support for banks teetering on failure. As he did throughout the speech, he took time to address opposing arguments and perspectives. To those who take the intuitively and emotionally understandable position that we should simply let the banks fail – "where’s my bailout?" in short – he argued that in truth a dollar in credit can have an immense multiplier effect that will produce a much greater gain in terms of jobs and the broader economy. And in turn, the failure of those banks would have a vastly disproportionate impact on every American. To those who urge the preemptive takeover of banks, "the nationalization argument" as he called it, he gave assurance that his reticence to engage in that strategy was not born of ideological rigidity or moral obligation to shareholders, but rather a belief that this strategy would cause even bigger losses for taxpayers.
Perhaps the heart of the speech was focused on the core weaknesses of the economy that led to the crisis we see now, and the pillars of the new economy the President envisions to ensure such a crisis will be kept at bay in the future:
It is simply not sustainable to have a 21st-century financial system that is governed by 20th-century rules and regulations that allowed the recklessness of a few to threaten the entire economy. It is not sustainable to have an economy where in one year, 40 percent of our corporate profits came from a financial sector that was based on inflated home prices, maxed-out credit cards, over-leveraged banks and overvalued assets. It's not sustainable to have an economy where the incomes of the top 1 percent has skyrocketed while the typical working household has seen their incomes decline by nearly $2,000. That's just not a sustainable model for long-term prosperity.
For even as too many were out there chasing ever-bigger bonuses and short-term profits over the last decade, we continued to neglect the long-term threats to our prosperity: the crushing burden that the rising cost of health care is placing on families and businesses; the failure of our education system to prepare our workers for a new age; the progress that other nations are making on clean energy industries and technologies while we -- we remain addicted to foreign oil; the growing debt that we're passing on to our children. Even after we emerge from the current recession, these challenges will still represent major obstacles that stand in the way of our success in the 21st century. So we've got a lot of work to do.
Now, there's a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that tells the story of two men. The first built his house on a pile of sand, and it was soon destroyed when a storm hit. But the second is known as the wise man, for when "the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock."
It was founded upon a rock. We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock. We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity -- a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest; where we consume less at home and send more exports abroad.
It's a foundation built upon five pillars that will grow our economy and make this new century another American century: Number one, new rules for Wall Street that will reward drive and innovation, not reckless risk-taking -- (applause); number two, new investments in education that will make our workforce more skilled and competitive -- (applause); number three, new investments in renewable energy and technology that will create new jobs and new industries -- (applause); number four, new investments in health care that will cut costs for families and businesses; and number five, new savings in our federal budget that will bring down the debt for future generations. (Applause.)
That's the new foundation we must build. That's our house built upon a rock. That must be our future -- and my administration's policies are designed to achieve that future.
Towards the end of his speech, he noted that in addition to the fundamental weaknesses of the economy, there is also a fundamental weakness in the political system that must be confronted. He talked about how the prospects for long-term, bold, necessary solutions often give way to 24-hour news cycles and fluctuating poll numbers.
This can’t be one of those times. The challenges are too great. The stakes are too high. I know how difficult it is for Members of Congress in both parties to grapple with some of the big decisions we face right now. It’s more than most congresses and most presidents have to deal with in a lifetime.
But we have been called to govern in extraordinary times. And that requires an extraordinary sense of responsibility – to ourselves, to the men and women who sent us here, and to the many generations whose lives will be affected for good or for ill because of what we do here.
Having been forthright about the challenges ahead, he expressed confidence: America will have that house upon the rock.
Does Good Governance define the Progressives and are they really progressive enough?
Progressive Divisions
by BooMan
Mon Apr 13th, 2009 at 11:10:30 PM EST
Today's progressives are different from the people that lived during The Progressive Era but we share much in common with our forebears. Consider this description:
Progressives did not agree on a single agenda. They disagreed vehemently in their attitudes toward such subjects as immigration restriction and prohibition of alcohol. They were a diverse lot that included Republicans and Democrats, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, and urban and rural reformers. Women's organizations stood at the forefront of the social reforms and policy innovations during the Progressive era...
...For the most part, Progressives were urban and college-educated, including journalists, academics, teachers, doctors, and nurses, as well as many business people.
Uniting these various reform movements stemmed from a preoccupation with the elimination of corruption and waste and an emphasis on efficiency, science, and professional expertise as the best ways to solve social problems.
A book published in 1913, Benjamin Parker De Witt's The Progressive Movement, argued that three tendencies underlay progressive reforms: the desire to eliminate political corruption, the impulse to make government more efficient and effective, and a belief that government should "relieve social and economic distress." Progressives wanted to apply the techniques of systematization, rationalization, and bureaucratic administrative control developed by business to problems posed by the city and industry.
Today's progressives, like the old ones, do not share a single agenda. We are still made up of liberal Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, and skewed toward the female gender. We are still dominated by the urban, the college-educated, and the professional ranks. What's changed is mainly related to larger demographic and living-style changes that have occurred over the last century. For example, we're less urban now because we have suburbs and exurbs that house hordes of college-educated professionals.
Yet, our movement is more inclusive of urban and immigrant organizations because of the decline of machine politics and the rise of sophisticated community organizations in our cities. Many of our new immigrant communities are neither Christian nor Jewish, and progressives are increasingly secular in orientation (including toleration and the embrace of the Gay Community). The Hispanic population has exploded and trends heavily Democratic. And blacks now enjoy full voting and citizenship rights and form the backbone of the progressive movement.
Another difference is that the modern progressive movement is almost totally devoid of support from members of the Republican Party. The modern progressive movement can best be understood ideologically as a mixture of center-left Democrats, left and far-left Democrats, and elements of Greens and non-aligned far-left independents (whose participation is heavily dependent on mini-cycles and message/personality). Insofar as the new progressive movement involves Republicans, they are no longer Republicans.
They have been driven out over the modern GOP's social conservatism, opposition to science-based policy/efficient government, lack of respect for civil liberties, corruption, and/or their foreign adventurism.
The modern progressive movement is more diverse in every way from the prior one. It has more geographic scope, involves a wider array of ethnicities, races, and religions, and brings together rather than separating the urban community. And, yet, very few elected politicians in Washington represent progressive values as they are daily expressed in everything from the Blogosphere to black/Hispanic radio, to college newspapers. Our lack of representation actually unites us and helps keep some of our internal divisions hidden...at least, most of the time.
For, while progressives are united in opposing corruption and supporting good government in the interest of relieving social and economic distress, we have many differences. I often separate progressives into two subcategories: Academic Progressives and Urban Progressives. The reason I do this is to highlight our differences. Most people do not actually belong in just one camp, but life-experience counts for a lot.
In the broadest terms, Academic Progressives differ from Urban Progressives in the urgency and focus of their approach. Academics like to devise long-term strategies for ameliorating social ills. Perhaps because they like to develop positive slippery-slopes, they are always on the watch-out for negative slippery slopes. Academics are hyper-vigilant about separation of church and state (e.g., on school choice and faith-based charities), while Urban Progressives are more willing to accept any help they can get regardless of potential long-term consequences.
Because Urban Progressives work in their communities and face first-hand the day-to-day problems of the poor and dispossessed, they tend to have lower expectations (less idealistic) and focus on pragmatic solutions that solve problems in the very short-term. Urban Progressives might organize protests and petitions to keep the recreation centers and libraries open. Academic Progressives are more likely to explore ways to improve the stability of the city budget so that we don't face cyclical pressure to close public pools and libraries.
There can be surprises, too. Urban Progressives are concerned about police brutality, racial profiling, the war on drugs, and the availability of guns. But they're more concerned about crime and the lack of police protection against thugs in their neighborhoods. As a general matter, Urban Progressives are tougher on crime than Academic Progressives. They are more likely to see the necessity of gun ownership, for example, because the police cannot (or will not) protect them from home intrusion. They are less likely to oppose Stop and Frisk laws than Academics who are concerned with the slippery slope impact on civil liberties.
All these things are relative and averages, but there are real differences between progressives. Even something as simple as the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from pirates can split progressives. Someone told me today that I'm a right-winger because I applaud the job our Navy SEALS did and have no sympathy for the three pirates who were killed in the process. And I am constantly reminded that a small but significant percentage of the Academic Progressive Left actually does fit the negative stereotypes (Blame America First) and distrusts power to such a degree that they could never actually wield it.
But we have entered a new progressive era and we will be increasing our political power on the Left for some time. We won't agree on everything, but we'll agree on enough to maintain a coherent and stable left-leaning governing majority on the Congressional level. Progressives that understand power and respect and desire power will do well. Progressives that do not understand, respect, or desire power will remain, by necessity, outside critiquers who always insist they hold the only true progressive values.
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Progressive Divisions | 36 comments (36 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Contrary to what some progressive like to think, we live in a real world, with real dangers. Not all problems can be cured with idealogical purity. Reading progressive blogs I sometimes get a feeling some of the posters are not all that different in 'moral certitude' than 'wingers'.
It is possible to be proud of America, and Americans without being evil or jingoistic.
It is possible to love your country, but not necessarily like everything it does.
nalbar
by nalbar (nalbarsatgmaildotcom) on Mon Apr 13th, 2009 at 11:32:58 PM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
And I am constantly reminded that a small but significant percentage of the Academic Progressive left actually does fit the negative stereotypes (Blame America First) and distrust power to such a degree that they could never actually wield it.
I think there is a very small part, although it may seem larger as they tend to be the most vocal and follow politics very closely.
And I don't think the characterization 'blame America first' is accurate, but it's more of an empathy thing...ie, seeing the USA as others might, and being much more willing to see and acknowledge shortcomings. Also, I think progressives- by nature- tend to identify and side with underdogs and the oppressed, hence the rationalizing of the actions of the pirates.
by jdw on Mon Apr 13th, 2009 at 11:48:59 PM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Here's a MyDD piece that concludes:
Now ask yourselves, why are there pirates off the coast of Somalia?
Sorry, but I am not indifferent to the plight of Somalis especially when the root causes of their misery is US militarism and corporate greed. The US and the Europeans continue to put their noses where they don't belong. They poke at snakes and then wonder why the snake bites back.
Needless to say, he never built much of any predicate for Somalia's problems being caused by the United States. Europe? Maybe. The Soviet Union? Possibly. Regardless, it's all our fault. And, of course, the people that drew the maps that created Somalia in 1885. They were Americans...not!
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:12:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
I see your point, but I think this is a very small but very vocal minority of progressives as a whole, perhaps very overrepresented in the blogosphere.
At least I hope so :)
Jeebus.
by jdw on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:29:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Here's Susie Madrak at Crooks & Liars:
I wonder which principled member of our corporate media will point out that, in the big picture, the Somali pirates are acting in self-defense?
Overrepresented? Sure. I said 'small, but significant.'
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:35:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
I noticed a lot of comments like this at various blogs over the last several days. (Mostly from reader comments and not as featured posts.)
I assumed that this represents a very small minority, figuring that of maybe 100 progressives, a small minority of them are blog connected, even less blog active, and even less have these views. Dunno.
by jdw on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 01:02:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
No. It's much more widespread. It's still a small minority but they have a big megaphone.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 01:10:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
ugh.
by jdw on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 01:19:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
But you can't deny the role the US has played that has contributed to the continuing failed state-ness of Somalia, and that THAT is a major contributor to getting people to take up piracy.
by MNPundit on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 09:15:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Here
and
Here
The US is not the sum of the problem here, but we have not helped and we have often hurt, though I don't think there are any easy answers.
by MNPundit on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 09:21:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
No, I do deny that.
I think the United States was briefly allied with the Somali government during the Cold War and we tried to help them in 1992 with some humanitarian aid. The place is very hard to govern. It's not our fault. About the only blame I can place on America is that we sold them weapons that were later used in their civil war. We did nothing to promote piracy. He haven't had any interest in keeping Somalia a failed state, and we're right to consider its current state as a security threat to the whole world.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:36:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
I never said we wanted to keep Somalia as a failed state, so don't put words in my mouth. But the policies we have pursued have had the effect of making the situation worse and at times, impeding what progress there is.
What do intentions have to do with that?
by MNPundit on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 01:16:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
if you look hard enough you can blame the United States for anything and everything. And sometimes we are directly to blame. But in Somalia? It's a very strained argument. There is a long line of Brits, Italians, Soviets, and Somalis ahead of us that can take blame first.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 01:19:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
I agree with your take completely but didn't the US military support Ethopia with aid in the most recent conflict?
Blue Tidal Wave
by Mac G on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:39:07 AM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Yes:
WASHINGTON -- The United States has quietly poured weapons and military advisers into Ethiopia, whose recent invasion of Somalia opened a new front in the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:48:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Getting there - but ... (none / 0)
Look at the "new way forward" banking plan promoted by OpenLeft and FDL and similar and you will see that the "academic left" is not really about much change in the status quo at all. They are about: we need more regulations and people like us doing the regulating.
by rootless2 (sansracine_at_yahoo_dot_fr) on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 07:59:10 AM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 1)
An Inconvenient opinion, apparently:
Beyond Pirate Rescue: What's Really Happening in Somalia?
by Valtin [Subscribe]
Share this on Twitter - Beyond Pirate Rescue: What's Really Happening in Somalia? Mon Apr 13, 2009 at 11:16:03 AM PDT
The dramatic rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates made for smash headlines in the U.S. and around the world, but is not the first such dramatic rescue from pirates in these waters. The French had dramatic video footage of one of their captures.
What has not been covered in the news, obsessed with GOP hopes for Obama's first big failure, and Democrats patriotic triumphalism, is that the U.S. has played a big role in plunging Somalia into the chaos that has allowed piracy to take hold there, and that it's an open question how the Obama administration will deal with the bigger picture.
This diary is an attempt to cover these two issues.
Valtin's diary :: ::
No one wants to see an innocent man be killed or held hostage, so it was with some satisfaction that most heard of the rescue of the sea captain who had offered himself up as hostage for the safety of his crew.
But this kind of small scale human drama is dwarfed by the reality of what has been happening in Somalia for almost two decades now. I don't know why large-scale human drama doesn't play as well in the U.S. media, but I suspect it is because when it serves U.S. interests to exploit a tragedy, headlines are rolled out.
When the tragedy, such as the millions of refugees created by the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, is politically inconvenient, the headlines are mysteriously absent.
An Inconvient Fact: The U.S. Helped Create the Conditions for Piracy
From Times Online (a conservative UK newspaper -- emphases added -- H/T Chris Floyd):
Years of violence, neglect and misguided policies have left Somalia one of the most dangerous countries and a breeding ground for the pirates attacking one of the world's busiest shipping routes.
Today the northeast area of the country, including Puntland, has been carved up by warlords who finance themselves by drug and gun running.
This is also the heartland of the pirates, whose main backers are linked to the Western-backed government. Radical Islamists control much of the south, including the key port of Kismayo and the porous border area with Kenya, a staunch Western ally.
This has realised a Western nightmare, which was supposed to have been destroyed by Ethiopia's American-backed invasion of Somalia two years ago in support of a puppet government created by the international community.
That alliance spanned the spectrum from extreme radicals to moderate, devout Muslims.
The latter were in charge.
Everyone - except Pentagon planners, it seems - knew that Somalia had never proved fertile territory for Saudi-style radical Islam. However, indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas by Ethiopia, Somalia's historic enemy, with huge casualties, put an end to that.
The Islamists were driven out, the moderates went into exile and the hardliners took control of the south with a popular powerbase beyond their wildest dreams.
Approximately 20,000 have died, and almost two million people have been displaced in this senseless civil war, prompted in part by the U.S., and certainly a proxy war with numerous players (the U.S., Ethiopia, various Arab states, Eritrea, even North Korea!, as we shall see).
So while I'm glad this sea captain was rescued, I don't look at the U.S. government as some sort of savior.
And I certainly am not angry at Somalians, who did not ask for the rule of warlords, pirates, and hardline Islamists in a fractured state ruling over them. Many have fled for the refugee camps already.
The Huffington Post published an article yesterday by Joanne Offer, IRC information officer in Nairobi, describing the miserable conditions in which a quarter-million Somalian refugees are living in the overcrowded Dadaab camp in eastern Kenya.
Dr. Vincent Kahi, the IRC's health coordinator, described a cholera outbreak: "To date, the number of cases . . . has been small --- just 26 --- and we have managed to contain the outbreak, but resources in the camps remain massively overstretched and provide ideal conditions for diseases like cholera to keep coming back. All [aid] agencies in Dadaab are doing their best, but the sheer number of people in such a small space and in an area with water scarcity is a recipe for future problems."
While I do not blame Obama -- and please note this, readers who may think I'm trashing Obama -- such facts mute any enthusiasm I have over this latest military show.
Again, I'm glad an innocent man was saved, but I'm sick of the U.S. media, who makes a huge thing because it's an American life, but barely makes a peep over what U.S. policy in the region has wrought in past years, and to the miserable suffering of the people in the region.
Convergent Evidence of U.S. Duplicity in Somalia
Those touting the U.S. raid as some sort of Entebbe, i.e., a military action that will make others think twice about messing with the big, bad United States, just don't get it.
Even U.S. Naval Forces Central Command chief Vice Adm. Bill Gortney stated after the rescue, "This could escalate violence in this part of the world, no question about it."
Other pirates in the region are quoted as making violent threats, but the real truth is that the pirates already understand that the U.S. will intervene in their region at will, as in the backing the Ethiopian invasion of their country to overthrow their government.
Does anyone really think that this one incident will significantly change their consciousness of what the U.S. can do?
A commenter in another diary called Somalia "a pawn of foreign interests and paranoia"? I'd say so. The former includes the United States, and their paranoia is well-earned.
From an article in The Progressive in Dec. 2008:
Alas, there are no good guys in this war. Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi is a nasty piece of work. He has been a darling of the United States ever since the Clinton Administration's time, when he was hailed as being part of the "African renaissance."
The war on terror has drawn Zenawi, a Christian leader of a religiously mixed but Christian-dominated country, closer to the Bush Administration. African renaissance man or not, he has been ruthless in his exercise of power.
For instance, Ethiopian security forces killed nearly fifty people in November 2005 in a crackdown on protests. They also arrested thousands, including politicians, journalists, and activists.
U.S. policy in Somalia is born out of desperation.
The United States abandoned Somalia after its failed mission in the early 1990s, and looked the other way as the country was mired in anarchy for the next decade. It was only recently that the Bush Administration, frightened by Islamic fundamentalism, began a dubious policy of handing out cash to Somali warlords as a way to check the Islamist militias....
The human toll of the invasion is increasing day by day.
Plus, the U.S. backing for the invasion will add to its unpopularity on the continent and in the Middle East. The African Union and the Arab League have called for Ethiopia to pull out, as have Kenya and Djibouti.
The United States should firmly add its voice, and instead of backing military adventures should invest in the Somali peace process as a way of staving off the Islamist threat.
The Ethiopian invasion of Somalia had full U.S. military backing. So you see, the Somalis have already tasted what U.S. military power can do. From coverage in Wired:
Citing the possibility that the Islamic Courts government was harboring terrorists, the Pentagon ordered gunships, fighters and warships to attack targets in Somalia, paving the way for Ethiopian tanks to sweep south, destroying Somalia's first relatively stable government in 15 years.
What Somalia was left with is starvation, tribal infighting, a brutal Ethiopian occupation and, ironically, a genuine Islamic insurgency where before there was only a suspicion of one....
Even the European Union warned the U.S. that bombing Somali towns "only escalates violence," as it purportedly goes after Al Qaeda Islamists.
Oh, and here's another example of U.S. duplicity and cynicism in the region that will blow your mind, from the NY Times in April 2007:
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON, April 7 -- Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of the country's nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North, in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior American officials.
The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopia was in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside Somalia, a campaign that aided the American policy of combating religious extremists in the Horn of Africa.
Obama and Somalia
What of President Obama's policy towards Somalia? One sea rescue does not make a foreign policy.
When he was running for president, Obama stated that he wanted "a coherent strategy for stabilizing Somalia."
Writing at Foreign Policy in Focus earlier this year, Francis Njubi Nesbitt described the situation for the new Obama administration (emphasis in original):
Among the litany of booby traps left by the Bush administration for the Obama team, Somalia could be one of the most complicated and bizarre....
The Obama administration, if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearing is any indication, also views the Horn of Africa in the context of terrorism.
Nevertheless, Obama has also talked of his preference for diplomatic solutions. Somalia would be an ideal place to test his diplomacy.
Nesbitt described the particulars of the Ethiopian invasion, providing readers here with yet another description of the situation, the better for us to form an opinion of what has occurred in that part of the world.
Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia in December 2006, backed by the United States, sparked an Islamist resistance that led to thousands of civilian deaths, displaced over a million people, and depopulated the capital, Mogadishu.
But instead of focusing on the aftermath of this crisis and helping foster a peace process, the United States, European Union, and other international actors are engaged in the more dramatic and media-friendly anti-piracy campaign....
While the pirates attract the lion's share of world attention, the Islamist militias are gaining ground and are sure to control the whole country once Ethiopia withdraws its troops.
The conflict has spread to other parts of the region, with suicide bombings in the formerly stable Somaliland and Puntland regions, piracy in international waters, and cross-border kidnappings in Kenya.
U.S. and EU actions and policies since 2001 were supposed to prevent this kind of chaos. By treating Somalia and the region as a battle-zone in the "war on terror," however, the international community has made things worse....
Nesbett describes U.S. policy in the Bush years as "obdurate and counterproductive." The CIA backed the warlords, "setting the stage" for the rise of the "Islamic Courts", which in turn stoked the invasion of Ethiopia, in the name of the "war on terror." As we can see, even the North Koreans got into the act.
What a concoction of cynicism, ignorance, misdealing, and big power politics, with the Somali people the innocent victims! The media talk about piracy and dramatic sea rescues does not change the situation in that part of the world.
In fact, if the chaos in Somalia, stirred up by the U.S. and Ethiopia, had not spilled into the world's sea lanes, then we most likely would not be talking about Somalia at all right now.
I can't take much from Obama's sign-off on the rescue of Capt. Phillips. I think the U.S. couldn't afford to let the captain of a U.S.-flagged ship (a rare enough thing in itself) be held hostage or killed.
But what now of Somalia? Most likely it will slip off the front pages, and the excited recommended diaries at Daily Kos, and back into its state of forgotten misery, a pawn in the U.S. perpetual war on terror.
Nesbitt ends his article hopefully. I don't share his sense of hope, but will end here, too, because at the moment, even desperate hope may be all we have.
Obama's pledge to change the Bush administration's belligerent and counterproductive policies could have far-reaching consequences for the region as a whole.
Also posted at Invictus
Tags: Somalia, Ethiopia, piracy, Richard Phillips, U.S. war on terror, war on terror, refugees, Barack Obama, Recommended (all tags) :: Add/Edit Tags to this Diary :: Previous Tag Versions
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dd
by lyvwyr101 (lyvwyr101@aol.com) on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 08:41:57 AM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
The irony is that often those best equipped to wield power are scared of power and reluctant to wield it.
by MNPundit on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 09:22:59 AM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
a lot of what you say is accurate, but this:
Urban Progressives are concerned about police brutality, racial profiling, the war on drugs, and the availability of guns. But they're more concerned about crime and the lack of police protection against thugs in their neighborhoods. As a general matter, Urban Progressives are tougher on crime than Academic Progressives. They are more likely to see the necessity of gun ownership, for example, because the police cannot (or will not) protect them from home intrusion. They are less likely to oppose Stop and Frisk laws than Academics who are concerned with the slippery slope impact on civil liberties.
...has a lot of of problematic statements to unpack. A lot.
rban Progressives are concerned about police brutality, racial profiling, the war on drugs, and the availability of guns. But they're more concerned about crime and the lack of police protection against thugs in their neighborhoods.
Actually, it's not a question of more concerned about one or the other, but a balancing act. In Philly, for example, the system has been out of whack for years: we have neighborhoods that, thanks to Bush-era cuts, are patrolled by cops in cars who don't know the residents. As a result, when an incident occurs if the cops bother to show up at all, there is more likely to be brutality because the cops don't know anyone: both are due to the lack of community presence. Urban progressives like my neighbors and me want police protection against thugs, but not in the sense of a monolithic police state.
They are less likely to oppose Stop and Frisk laws than Academics who are concerned with the slippery slope impact on civil liberties.
That may be true among wealthy white progressives in neighborhoods far away from the poor, but among urban progressives who live in the neighborhoods targeted by stop and frisk, the opposite is true. We see stop-and-frisk as a police state tactic that will encourage racial profiling, target young black men indiscriminately, and breed distrust between the community and the cops.
In short, you are oversimplifying.
John Mccain Called his wife WHAT??
by brendan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 09:23:38 AM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
true. it would be a very long essay if i didn't.
but that's okay because we have a comments section to get into more detail.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:21:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Let me get this straight . . . Liberals that don't want to go around the world starting wars are academic wimps that will never have power so they should stfu, or something . . . .
Okay. Not a particularly novel argument (I seem to remember a good number of conservative Democrats and right-wingers mocking those opposed to Iraq war as being appeasing cowards that can never have power in America)
But I think you and Obama will discover the trappings of the super-warrior fighter killing the bad guys and laying down some justice will only get you so far. It's not a win-win for you and your man Obama--just ask Bush the dangers of mindless militarism to one's political fortunes.
Your killing and wars will not bring about your stated goals of peace in the Horn of Africa. It might bring Obama a small bump in the polls, and all these noxesistant people that were waiting for Obama to prove he's not a secret communist and is willing to use the military can relax. Yes, the media game of making sure our leader will order assasinations and military assaults is alive and well. And you and Obama have secret chubbies over this. how convenient. If we don't share in your childish death fantasies than we're not "serious" enough liberals and the real adults will never let us near real power because we're not smart enough to use military power just cause we can and to show the world we're not pussies.
That's all this is. You are puffing your chest out and you want to kill you some bad guys and you will use the very American political tool of claiming those that don't want war are pussies. It doesn't matter that your and your warmongering ilk are almost always wrong. You need the history book dude. You're clueless.
It's disgusting. And Obama (and this country) will fail if Obama takes the military bait to start conflicts throughout the World.
American empire as we know it is over. Whether you and Obama like that or not. You might have a couple of media coups up your sleeves. Democrats always like putting on the codpiece and playing commander and I'm sure Obama thinks he's a big man now and he loves everyone feeling his muscles and telling him how tough he looks. As you apparantly do. Do you feel like a tough guy? Jumping around in joy over an assasination. Did you dream about it? Or is it simple political opportunism for you? You see your chance for your man to look tough and this is your way of getting back at all those liberals that were saying mean things about Obama's "bipartisanship" (really his conservativism).
Is Matt Yglesias a big progressive pussy unlike you, the tough guy? http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-14/the-war-on-piracy/ Do you and your urban tough guys that like guns plan on prosecuting a war in Somalia? Do you know how many people died there? Via U.S. guns and weapons and from the hands of U.S. military? Are you going to be the tough guy and go fight in Somalia?
by SFHawkguy on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 11:30:29 AM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
"Let me get this straight . . . Liberals that don't want to go around the world starting wars are academic wimps that will never have power so they should stfu, or something . . . ."
That's so wrong, you deserve some sort of commendation.
by rootless2 (sansracine_at_yahoo_dot_fr) on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:17:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
What do you think this is all about?
Bush and military wanted to be able to declare the whole world a war zone.
The legal justification for America's actions in Somalia 2 years ago was that 3 terrorists were responsible for the bombings in Kenya so we had to support a war (involving thousands of deaths) to bring these 3 dudes "to justice". It was subterfuge for the real agenda which was to get involved in the affairs of Somalia and prevent the Islamic Courts movement from taking over the country. It was a bullshit legal justification for starting and participating in a pretty good sized war.
Most of America was blissfully unaware because the pussy Democrats in Congress didn't want to look like pussies so they didn't say anything as our country waged a probably illegal action in Somalia.
Now, we hear we have to send the military in because of pirates.
To me, on its face, it appears the military is once again seeking justification for a wider war in the region that has nothiing or little to do with piracy.
Maybe it is in the U.S. interest to wage war on Somalia. I tend to think not.
But the U.S. Congress should declare war on Somalia if that is the case.
We don't need more bullshit wars for unstated hidden reasons. Especially when the political dynamic is a Democrat politician trying to seize on the popularity of a president at war who appears to like the game of going after the evildoers . . .
by SFHawkguy on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 02:58:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
what is it all about? Hostage rescue. Why are you turning into the Third World War. A man was kidnapped and held for ransom. He was freed. End of story. He didn't kidnap himself you know.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 03:05:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Because I see where this is going. It will be the justification for a greater military adventure in the region. It's the military's way of asserting it's power over Obama.
Crime happens throughout the world and throughout history. Declaring war on crime will not work.
This is simply a way for the military and the U.S. to assert it's ability to act throughout the world. We were like kids at the State Fair shooting gallery last time. Truckloads of Somalis were wiped out 2 years and where did it get us? Do we as a country really know enough to support a warlord over a Islamic fighter in Somalia? Haven't we learned that we don't know enough to pick sides in this battle and our bombs and death and destruction always make it worse?
We are always told that it is heroic actions of the noble Navy sniper (or whatever) that will save us. Then as we start wiping out whole villages or start dropping bombs on the "bad" guys it all goes to hell.
Don't fall for trick.
Pirates are bad. Crime is bad. But this is about a bigger military prescense in the area. That is not good for America. And you guys trying to sucker the U.S. into a wider war are the real un-American traitors. You would have the World in smoking ruins as you cling to your silly sniper fantasies. Did you dream about pulling the trigger yourself?
by SFHawkguy on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 03:14:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
give me a break.
The whole world is clamoring for some solution to the piracy problem. And in the whole wide range of American projection of power, nothing has more legitimacy as our role in securing safe shipping lanes. Working with the Chinese and European nations, we will find a way to make the Suez trip safe for shipping. And we should do that or we're worth a damn as a world power.
It's by far the least offensive aspect of our power.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 03:39:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Killing kidnappers is assassination?
I'm collecting quite a list of STUPID LEFTIST remarks. Maybe I'll make a little book for the holidays filled with these canards. The righties will buy them in droves. $$$$$
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:41:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
I have no idea what happened on that boat. I really don't care. I know enough to be suspect of the story put out by the military. Some heroic sniper [legally] used deadly force to stop an illegal action. Great.
I'm refering to your not-to-hidden glee in sending a bullet into another human because it makes your man look like a tough guy.
And I'm referring to your glee in taking on the crazy left. You get them tough guy. You ever killed another human being? Even if it is legally justified?
You've just been waiting for your chicken hawk in chief to be able to bring in the guns and start shooting so you can battle the pussy peåçenik left and show that Obama is as American as American pie and the sweet justice of a sniper's bullet ripping through some subhuman beast on the horn of that subhuman continent. Kill all of America's enemies. That will surely get the heat off of Obama and we can all forget our collective problems as we breeze in and smoke these thugs. You in?
Write your foolish book about the "stupid left". I can tell this is where you've been heading. You, the real men on the left, will distract the country from its real problems as you and the rest of the tough guys go smoke you some evildoers.
Did you see how we smoked that Somalia scum 2 years ago. It was like a video game. Stupid Muslims riding around like big fat targets that we SMOKED . . .;
Tough guy. How'd that turn out? Or, are you urban progressives too touigh to get involved in un-American debates about war with us peacenik pussies? You know that America will support you as you smoke you some black African Muslim scum? Go for it. It will be a cheap political win for you.
Big man taking on the pussy left. You tell them how silly they are for not realizing that we can sniper assasinate our way out of our problems. Pussies on the left don't realize the power of a sniper assasian--or as Booman would have it--a super-partirot hero gunfighter bringin' American justice to the World.
You show us silly lefties. Write your silly book,
by SFHawkguy on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 02:49:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Your problem is much deeper than pirate killing.
It seems that you see it as unseemly for Americans to celebrate the successful rescue of one of our citizens because the price was the loss of life for three poor brown Muslims. You are putting a whole lot of your personal issues on me where they do not belong. I don't care if you personally are a pussy. I didn't say that you were. I'm just glad that Captain Phillips is safe and sound and that we had a bit of good luck. Politically, it is helpful to the degree that being decisive, lucky, and successful confers benefits on any leader. But the feel-good part of this is that Phillips was rescued unharmed, not that people got killed in the process.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 03:02:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
So now we're STUPID, too?
Fascinating, how quickly the "gloves come off" over other people's opinions. I guess we really "hit a nerve," for some people. Tough shit. That's how that goes.
dd
by lyvwyr101 (lyvwyr101@aol.com) on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:47:35 PM EST
Truly Insightful (none / 0)
Progressives that understand power and respect and desire power will do well. Progressives that do not understand, respect, or desire power will remain, by necessity, outside critiquers who always insist they hold the only true progressive values.
Very well stated.
Let's include an observation. Barack Obama clearly belongs in the first group listed above but used superior political skill to convince the second group that he was "one of them."
Ergo, as time goes on, and history tends to write itself, there will be more and more of a reckoning of sorts as more and more of the folks in the second group become more and more aware that Barack Obama is not "one of them."
by Prometheus09 on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 02:30:37 PM EST
Re: Truly Insightful (none / 0)
I consider Obama to be a progressive, and you see signs of it all the time, including most recently his bold action inre Cuba.
But he's not where I want him to be on civil liberties. It's a huge problem that won't go away.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 02:52:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Implying that someone is mentally unstable because they disagree with you is a cheap shot. Be that as it may-do kidnappers usually kill their victims when they demand ransom?
I know little about the mentality or motives of kidnappers-while so many others seem to know so much-however, wrong though I may be, I thought that exchanging the hostage for money was the dynamic involved.
dd
by lyvwyr101 (lyvwyr101@aol.com) on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 03:16:09 PM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
We are still made up of liberal Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, and skewed toward the female gender.
A significant percentage of us are none of the above. There are a bunch of other religions in the mix, some of which lean heavily left, and of course, the biggest (and fastest-growing) non-Judaeo-Christian faction would be non-religious people.
As far as the pirates go, I don't frankly give a shit. As soon as you pick up a gun and use it to compel behavior, you have left the arena of civilized discourse and are, as far as I'm concerned, a fair target for anyone else with a gun. Those who use violence or the threat of violence to achieve their ends are in no position to complain when someone else uses violence to thwart them. And in the case of four guys with light arms engaging in a standoff with the US Navy, well, let's just say they earned their Darwin Awards just as surely as the folks at Waco and Ruby Ridge did with their hopeless standoffs. It doesn't matter who's right or wrong if one of the participants is unable to grasp simple matters of cause and effect.
by corvus on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 03:42:38 PM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
The Somali pirates were all teenagers, weren't they? There are violent, armed, and dangerous kids everywhere. Not just in Somalia.
No one works harder than law enforcement in dealing with violent and armed kids especially during hostage situations. Perhaps these kids were just not seen as being worth the time or the trouble.
dd
by lyvwyr101 (lyvwyr101@aol.com) on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 04:10:55 PM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
yes, it appears that the kidnappers were all 19 or younger. Youth might explain their recklessness. Imagine thinking that you can outsmart the US Navy while they tow you in an out-of-gas motorboat and wind up with $6 million in cash.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 04:19:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Progressive Divisions | 36 comments (36 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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by BooMan
Mon Apr 13th, 2009 at 11:10:30 PM EST
Today's progressives are different from the people that lived during The Progressive Era but we share much in common with our forebears. Consider this description:
Progressives did not agree on a single agenda. They disagreed vehemently in their attitudes toward such subjects as immigration restriction and prohibition of alcohol. They were a diverse lot that included Republicans and Democrats, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, and urban and rural reformers. Women's organizations stood at the forefront of the social reforms and policy innovations during the Progressive era...
...For the most part, Progressives were urban and college-educated, including journalists, academics, teachers, doctors, and nurses, as well as many business people.
Uniting these various reform movements stemmed from a preoccupation with the elimination of corruption and waste and an emphasis on efficiency, science, and professional expertise as the best ways to solve social problems.
A book published in 1913, Benjamin Parker De Witt's The Progressive Movement, argued that three tendencies underlay progressive reforms: the desire to eliminate political corruption, the impulse to make government more efficient and effective, and a belief that government should "relieve social and economic distress." Progressives wanted to apply the techniques of systematization, rationalization, and bureaucratic administrative control developed by business to problems posed by the city and industry.
Today's progressives, like the old ones, do not share a single agenda. We are still made up of liberal Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, and skewed toward the female gender. We are still dominated by the urban, the college-educated, and the professional ranks. What's changed is mainly related to larger demographic and living-style changes that have occurred over the last century. For example, we're less urban now because we have suburbs and exurbs that house hordes of college-educated professionals.
Yet, our movement is more inclusive of urban and immigrant organizations because of the decline of machine politics and the rise of sophisticated community organizations in our cities. Many of our new immigrant communities are neither Christian nor Jewish, and progressives are increasingly secular in orientation (including toleration and the embrace of the Gay Community). The Hispanic population has exploded and trends heavily Democratic. And blacks now enjoy full voting and citizenship rights and form the backbone of the progressive movement.
Another difference is that the modern progressive movement is almost totally devoid of support from members of the Republican Party. The modern progressive movement can best be understood ideologically as a mixture of center-left Democrats, left and far-left Democrats, and elements of Greens and non-aligned far-left independents (whose participation is heavily dependent on mini-cycles and message/personality). Insofar as the new progressive movement involves Republicans, they are no longer Republicans.
They have been driven out over the modern GOP's social conservatism, opposition to science-based policy/efficient government, lack of respect for civil liberties, corruption, and/or their foreign adventurism.
The modern progressive movement is more diverse in every way from the prior one. It has more geographic scope, involves a wider array of ethnicities, races, and religions, and brings together rather than separating the urban community. And, yet, very few elected politicians in Washington represent progressive values as they are daily expressed in everything from the Blogosphere to black/Hispanic radio, to college newspapers. Our lack of representation actually unites us and helps keep some of our internal divisions hidden...at least, most of the time.
For, while progressives are united in opposing corruption and supporting good government in the interest of relieving social and economic distress, we have many differences. I often separate progressives into two subcategories: Academic Progressives and Urban Progressives. The reason I do this is to highlight our differences. Most people do not actually belong in just one camp, but life-experience counts for a lot.
In the broadest terms, Academic Progressives differ from Urban Progressives in the urgency and focus of their approach. Academics like to devise long-term strategies for ameliorating social ills. Perhaps because they like to develop positive slippery-slopes, they are always on the watch-out for negative slippery slopes. Academics are hyper-vigilant about separation of church and state (e.g., on school choice and faith-based charities), while Urban Progressives are more willing to accept any help they can get regardless of potential long-term consequences.
Because Urban Progressives work in their communities and face first-hand the day-to-day problems of the poor and dispossessed, they tend to have lower expectations (less idealistic) and focus on pragmatic solutions that solve problems in the very short-term. Urban Progressives might organize protests and petitions to keep the recreation centers and libraries open. Academic Progressives are more likely to explore ways to improve the stability of the city budget so that we don't face cyclical pressure to close public pools and libraries.
There can be surprises, too. Urban Progressives are concerned about police brutality, racial profiling, the war on drugs, and the availability of guns. But they're more concerned about crime and the lack of police protection against thugs in their neighborhoods. As a general matter, Urban Progressives are tougher on crime than Academic Progressives. They are more likely to see the necessity of gun ownership, for example, because the police cannot (or will not) protect them from home intrusion. They are less likely to oppose Stop and Frisk laws than Academics who are concerned with the slippery slope impact on civil liberties.
All these things are relative and averages, but there are real differences between progressives. Even something as simple as the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from pirates can split progressives. Someone told me today that I'm a right-winger because I applaud the job our Navy SEALS did and have no sympathy for the three pirates who were killed in the process. And I am constantly reminded that a small but significant percentage of the Academic Progressive Left actually does fit the negative stereotypes (Blame America First) and distrusts power to such a degree that they could never actually wield it.
But we have entered a new progressive era and we will be increasing our political power on the Left for some time. We won't agree on everything, but we'll agree on enough to maintain a coherent and stable left-leaning governing majority on the Congressional level. Progressives that understand power and respect and desire power will do well. Progressives that do not understand, respect, or desire power will remain, by necessity, outside critiquers who always insist they hold the only true progressive values.
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Progressive Divisions | 36 comments (36 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Contrary to what some progressive like to think, we live in a real world, with real dangers. Not all problems can be cured with idealogical purity. Reading progressive blogs I sometimes get a feeling some of the posters are not all that different in 'moral certitude' than 'wingers'.
It is possible to be proud of America, and Americans without being evil or jingoistic.
It is possible to love your country, but not necessarily like everything it does.
nalbar
by nalbar (nalbarsatgmaildotcom) on Mon Apr 13th, 2009 at 11:32:58 PM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
And I am constantly reminded that a small but significant percentage of the Academic Progressive left actually does fit the negative stereotypes (Blame America First) and distrust power to such a degree that they could never actually wield it.
I think there is a very small part, although it may seem larger as they tend to be the most vocal and follow politics very closely.
And I don't think the characterization 'blame America first' is accurate, but it's more of an empathy thing...ie, seeing the USA as others might, and being much more willing to see and acknowledge shortcomings. Also, I think progressives- by nature- tend to identify and side with underdogs and the oppressed, hence the rationalizing of the actions of the pirates.
by jdw on Mon Apr 13th, 2009 at 11:48:59 PM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Here's a MyDD piece that concludes:
Now ask yourselves, why are there pirates off the coast of Somalia?
Sorry, but I am not indifferent to the plight of Somalis especially when the root causes of their misery is US militarism and corporate greed. The US and the Europeans continue to put their noses where they don't belong. They poke at snakes and then wonder why the snake bites back.
Needless to say, he never built much of any predicate for Somalia's problems being caused by the United States. Europe? Maybe. The Soviet Union? Possibly. Regardless, it's all our fault. And, of course, the people that drew the maps that created Somalia in 1885. They were Americans...not!
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:12:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
I see your point, but I think this is a very small but very vocal minority of progressives as a whole, perhaps very overrepresented in the blogosphere.
At least I hope so :)
Jeebus.
by jdw on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:29:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Here's Susie Madrak at Crooks & Liars:
I wonder which principled member of our corporate media will point out that, in the big picture, the Somali pirates are acting in self-defense?
Overrepresented? Sure. I said 'small, but significant.'
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:35:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
I noticed a lot of comments like this at various blogs over the last several days. (Mostly from reader comments and not as featured posts.)
I assumed that this represents a very small minority, figuring that of maybe 100 progressives, a small minority of them are blog connected, even less blog active, and even less have these views. Dunno.
by jdw on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 01:02:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
No. It's much more widespread. It's still a small minority but they have a big megaphone.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 01:10:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
ugh.
by jdw on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 01:19:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
But you can't deny the role the US has played that has contributed to the continuing failed state-ness of Somalia, and that THAT is a major contributor to getting people to take up piracy.
by MNPundit on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 09:15:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Here
and
Here
The US is not the sum of the problem here, but we have not helped and we have often hurt, though I don't think there are any easy answers.
by MNPundit on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 09:21:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
No, I do deny that.
I think the United States was briefly allied with the Somali government during the Cold War and we tried to help them in 1992 with some humanitarian aid. The place is very hard to govern. It's not our fault. About the only blame I can place on America is that we sold them weapons that were later used in their civil war. We did nothing to promote piracy. He haven't had any interest in keeping Somalia a failed state, and we're right to consider its current state as a security threat to the whole world.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:36:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
I never said we wanted to keep Somalia as a failed state, so don't put words in my mouth. But the policies we have pursued have had the effect of making the situation worse and at times, impeding what progress there is.
What do intentions have to do with that?
by MNPundit on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 01:16:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
if you look hard enough you can blame the United States for anything and everything. And sometimes we are directly to blame. But in Somalia? It's a very strained argument. There is a long line of Brits, Italians, Soviets, and Somalis ahead of us that can take blame first.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 01:19:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
I agree with your take completely but didn't the US military support Ethopia with aid in the most recent conflict?
Blue Tidal Wave
by Mac G on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:39:07 AM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Yes:
WASHINGTON -- The United States has quietly poured weapons and military advisers into Ethiopia, whose recent invasion of Somalia opened a new front in the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:48:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Getting there - but ... (none / 0)
Look at the "new way forward" banking plan promoted by OpenLeft and FDL and similar and you will see that the "academic left" is not really about much change in the status quo at all. They are about: we need more regulations and people like us doing the regulating.
by rootless2 (sansracine_at_yahoo_dot_fr) on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 07:59:10 AM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 1)
An Inconvenient opinion, apparently:
Beyond Pirate Rescue: What's Really Happening in Somalia?
by Valtin [Subscribe]
Share this on Twitter - Beyond Pirate Rescue: What's Really Happening in Somalia? Mon Apr 13, 2009 at 11:16:03 AM PDT
The dramatic rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates made for smash headlines in the U.S. and around the world, but is not the first such dramatic rescue from pirates in these waters. The French had dramatic video footage of one of their captures.
What has not been covered in the news, obsessed with GOP hopes for Obama's first big failure, and Democrats patriotic triumphalism, is that the U.S. has played a big role in plunging Somalia into the chaos that has allowed piracy to take hold there, and that it's an open question how the Obama administration will deal with the bigger picture.
This diary is an attempt to cover these two issues.
Valtin's diary :: ::
No one wants to see an innocent man be killed or held hostage, so it was with some satisfaction that most heard of the rescue of the sea captain who had offered himself up as hostage for the safety of his crew.
But this kind of small scale human drama is dwarfed by the reality of what has been happening in Somalia for almost two decades now. I don't know why large-scale human drama doesn't play as well in the U.S. media, but I suspect it is because when it serves U.S. interests to exploit a tragedy, headlines are rolled out.
When the tragedy, such as the millions of refugees created by the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, is politically inconvenient, the headlines are mysteriously absent.
An Inconvient Fact: The U.S. Helped Create the Conditions for Piracy
From Times Online (a conservative UK newspaper -- emphases added -- H/T Chris Floyd):
Years of violence, neglect and misguided policies have left Somalia one of the most dangerous countries and a breeding ground for the pirates attacking one of the world's busiest shipping routes.
Today the northeast area of the country, including Puntland, has been carved up by warlords who finance themselves by drug and gun running.
This is also the heartland of the pirates, whose main backers are linked to the Western-backed government. Radical Islamists control much of the south, including the key port of Kismayo and the porous border area with Kenya, a staunch Western ally.
This has realised a Western nightmare, which was supposed to have been destroyed by Ethiopia's American-backed invasion of Somalia two years ago in support of a puppet government created by the international community.
That alliance spanned the spectrum from extreme radicals to moderate, devout Muslims.
The latter were in charge.
Everyone - except Pentagon planners, it seems - knew that Somalia had never proved fertile territory for Saudi-style radical Islam. However, indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas by Ethiopia, Somalia's historic enemy, with huge casualties, put an end to that.
The Islamists were driven out, the moderates went into exile and the hardliners took control of the south with a popular powerbase beyond their wildest dreams.
Approximately 20,000 have died, and almost two million people have been displaced in this senseless civil war, prompted in part by the U.S., and certainly a proxy war with numerous players (the U.S., Ethiopia, various Arab states, Eritrea, even North Korea!, as we shall see).
So while I'm glad this sea captain was rescued, I don't look at the U.S. government as some sort of savior.
And I certainly am not angry at Somalians, who did not ask for the rule of warlords, pirates, and hardline Islamists in a fractured state ruling over them. Many have fled for the refugee camps already.
The Huffington Post published an article yesterday by Joanne Offer, IRC information officer in Nairobi, describing the miserable conditions in which a quarter-million Somalian refugees are living in the overcrowded Dadaab camp in eastern Kenya.
Dr. Vincent Kahi, the IRC's health coordinator, described a cholera outbreak: "To date, the number of cases . . . has been small --- just 26 --- and we have managed to contain the outbreak, but resources in the camps remain massively overstretched and provide ideal conditions for diseases like cholera to keep coming back. All [aid] agencies in Dadaab are doing their best, but the sheer number of people in such a small space and in an area with water scarcity is a recipe for future problems."
While I do not blame Obama -- and please note this, readers who may think I'm trashing Obama -- such facts mute any enthusiasm I have over this latest military show.
Again, I'm glad an innocent man was saved, but I'm sick of the U.S. media, who makes a huge thing because it's an American life, but barely makes a peep over what U.S. policy in the region has wrought in past years, and to the miserable suffering of the people in the region.
Convergent Evidence of U.S. Duplicity in Somalia
Those touting the U.S. raid as some sort of Entebbe, i.e., a military action that will make others think twice about messing with the big, bad United States, just don't get it.
Even U.S. Naval Forces Central Command chief Vice Adm. Bill Gortney stated after the rescue, "This could escalate violence in this part of the world, no question about it."
Other pirates in the region are quoted as making violent threats, but the real truth is that the pirates already understand that the U.S. will intervene in their region at will, as in the backing the Ethiopian invasion of their country to overthrow their government.
Does anyone really think that this one incident will significantly change their consciousness of what the U.S. can do?
A commenter in another diary called Somalia "a pawn of foreign interests and paranoia"? I'd say so. The former includes the United States, and their paranoia is well-earned.
From an article in The Progressive in Dec. 2008:
Alas, there are no good guys in this war. Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi is a nasty piece of work. He has been a darling of the United States ever since the Clinton Administration's time, when he was hailed as being part of the "African renaissance."
The war on terror has drawn Zenawi, a Christian leader of a religiously mixed but Christian-dominated country, closer to the Bush Administration. African renaissance man or not, he has been ruthless in his exercise of power.
For instance, Ethiopian security forces killed nearly fifty people in November 2005 in a crackdown on protests. They also arrested thousands, including politicians, journalists, and activists.
U.S. policy in Somalia is born out of desperation.
The United States abandoned Somalia after its failed mission in the early 1990s, and looked the other way as the country was mired in anarchy for the next decade. It was only recently that the Bush Administration, frightened by Islamic fundamentalism, began a dubious policy of handing out cash to Somali warlords as a way to check the Islamist militias....
The human toll of the invasion is increasing day by day.
Plus, the U.S. backing for the invasion will add to its unpopularity on the continent and in the Middle East. The African Union and the Arab League have called for Ethiopia to pull out, as have Kenya and Djibouti.
The United States should firmly add its voice, and instead of backing military adventures should invest in the Somali peace process as a way of staving off the Islamist threat.
The Ethiopian invasion of Somalia had full U.S. military backing. So you see, the Somalis have already tasted what U.S. military power can do. From coverage in Wired:
Citing the possibility that the Islamic Courts government was harboring terrorists, the Pentagon ordered gunships, fighters and warships to attack targets in Somalia, paving the way for Ethiopian tanks to sweep south, destroying Somalia's first relatively stable government in 15 years.
What Somalia was left with is starvation, tribal infighting, a brutal Ethiopian occupation and, ironically, a genuine Islamic insurgency where before there was only a suspicion of one....
Even the European Union warned the U.S. that bombing Somali towns "only escalates violence," as it purportedly goes after Al Qaeda Islamists.
Oh, and here's another example of U.S. duplicity and cynicism in the region that will blow your mind, from the NY Times in April 2007:
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON, April 7 -- Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of the country's nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North, in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior American officials.
The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopia was in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside Somalia, a campaign that aided the American policy of combating religious extremists in the Horn of Africa.
Obama and Somalia
What of President Obama's policy towards Somalia? One sea rescue does not make a foreign policy.
When he was running for president, Obama stated that he wanted "a coherent strategy for stabilizing Somalia."
Writing at Foreign Policy in Focus earlier this year, Francis Njubi Nesbitt described the situation for the new Obama administration (emphasis in original):
Among the litany of booby traps left by the Bush administration for the Obama team, Somalia could be one of the most complicated and bizarre....
The Obama administration, if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearing is any indication, also views the Horn of Africa in the context of terrorism.
Nevertheless, Obama has also talked of his preference for diplomatic solutions. Somalia would be an ideal place to test his diplomacy.
Nesbitt described the particulars of the Ethiopian invasion, providing readers here with yet another description of the situation, the better for us to form an opinion of what has occurred in that part of the world.
Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia in December 2006, backed by the United States, sparked an Islamist resistance that led to thousands of civilian deaths, displaced over a million people, and depopulated the capital, Mogadishu.
But instead of focusing on the aftermath of this crisis and helping foster a peace process, the United States, European Union, and other international actors are engaged in the more dramatic and media-friendly anti-piracy campaign....
While the pirates attract the lion's share of world attention, the Islamist militias are gaining ground and are sure to control the whole country once Ethiopia withdraws its troops.
The conflict has spread to other parts of the region, with suicide bombings in the formerly stable Somaliland and Puntland regions, piracy in international waters, and cross-border kidnappings in Kenya.
U.S. and EU actions and policies since 2001 were supposed to prevent this kind of chaos. By treating Somalia and the region as a battle-zone in the "war on terror," however, the international community has made things worse....
Nesbett describes U.S. policy in the Bush years as "obdurate and counterproductive." The CIA backed the warlords, "setting the stage" for the rise of the "Islamic Courts", which in turn stoked the invasion of Ethiopia, in the name of the "war on terror." As we can see, even the North Koreans got into the act.
What a concoction of cynicism, ignorance, misdealing, and big power politics, with the Somali people the innocent victims! The media talk about piracy and dramatic sea rescues does not change the situation in that part of the world.
In fact, if the chaos in Somalia, stirred up by the U.S. and Ethiopia, had not spilled into the world's sea lanes, then we most likely would not be talking about Somalia at all right now.
I can't take much from Obama's sign-off on the rescue of Capt. Phillips. I think the U.S. couldn't afford to let the captain of a U.S.-flagged ship (a rare enough thing in itself) be held hostage or killed.
But what now of Somalia? Most likely it will slip off the front pages, and the excited recommended diaries at Daily Kos, and back into its state of forgotten misery, a pawn in the U.S. perpetual war on terror.
Nesbitt ends his article hopefully. I don't share his sense of hope, but will end here, too, because at the moment, even desperate hope may be all we have.
Obama's pledge to change the Bush administration's belligerent and counterproductive policies could have far-reaching consequences for the region as a whole.
Also posted at Invictus
Tags: Somalia, Ethiopia, piracy, Richard Phillips, U.S. war on terror, war on terror, refugees, Barack Obama, Recommended (all tags) :: Add/Edit Tags to this Diary :: Previous Tag Versions
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dd
by lyvwyr101 (lyvwyr101@aol.com) on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 08:41:57 AM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
The irony is that often those best equipped to wield power are scared of power and reluctant to wield it.
by MNPundit on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 09:22:59 AM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
a lot of what you say is accurate, but this:
Urban Progressives are concerned about police brutality, racial profiling, the war on drugs, and the availability of guns. But they're more concerned about crime and the lack of police protection against thugs in their neighborhoods. As a general matter, Urban Progressives are tougher on crime than Academic Progressives. They are more likely to see the necessity of gun ownership, for example, because the police cannot (or will not) protect them from home intrusion. They are less likely to oppose Stop and Frisk laws than Academics who are concerned with the slippery slope impact on civil liberties.
...has a lot of of problematic statements to unpack. A lot.
rban Progressives are concerned about police brutality, racial profiling, the war on drugs, and the availability of guns. But they're more concerned about crime and the lack of police protection against thugs in their neighborhoods.
Actually, it's not a question of more concerned about one or the other, but a balancing act. In Philly, for example, the system has been out of whack for years: we have neighborhoods that, thanks to Bush-era cuts, are patrolled by cops in cars who don't know the residents. As a result, when an incident occurs if the cops bother to show up at all, there is more likely to be brutality because the cops don't know anyone: both are due to the lack of community presence. Urban progressives like my neighbors and me want police protection against thugs, but not in the sense of a monolithic police state.
They are less likely to oppose Stop and Frisk laws than Academics who are concerned with the slippery slope impact on civil liberties.
That may be true among wealthy white progressives in neighborhoods far away from the poor, but among urban progressives who live in the neighborhoods targeted by stop and frisk, the opposite is true. We see stop-and-frisk as a police state tactic that will encourage racial profiling, target young black men indiscriminately, and breed distrust between the community and the cops.
In short, you are oversimplifying.
John Mccain Called his wife WHAT??
by brendan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 09:23:38 AM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
true. it would be a very long essay if i didn't.
but that's okay because we have a comments section to get into more detail.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:21:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Let me get this straight . . . Liberals that don't want to go around the world starting wars are academic wimps that will never have power so they should stfu, or something . . . .
Okay. Not a particularly novel argument (I seem to remember a good number of conservative Democrats and right-wingers mocking those opposed to Iraq war as being appeasing cowards that can never have power in America)
But I think you and Obama will discover the trappings of the super-warrior fighter killing the bad guys and laying down some justice will only get you so far. It's not a win-win for you and your man Obama--just ask Bush the dangers of mindless militarism to one's political fortunes.
Your killing and wars will not bring about your stated goals of peace in the Horn of Africa. It might bring Obama a small bump in the polls, and all these noxesistant people that were waiting for Obama to prove he's not a secret communist and is willing to use the military can relax. Yes, the media game of making sure our leader will order assasinations and military assaults is alive and well. And you and Obama have secret chubbies over this. how convenient. If we don't share in your childish death fantasies than we're not "serious" enough liberals and the real adults will never let us near real power because we're not smart enough to use military power just cause we can and to show the world we're not pussies.
That's all this is. You are puffing your chest out and you want to kill you some bad guys and you will use the very American political tool of claiming those that don't want war are pussies. It doesn't matter that your and your warmongering ilk are almost always wrong. You need the history book dude. You're clueless.
It's disgusting. And Obama (and this country) will fail if Obama takes the military bait to start conflicts throughout the World.
American empire as we know it is over. Whether you and Obama like that or not. You might have a couple of media coups up your sleeves. Democrats always like putting on the codpiece and playing commander and I'm sure Obama thinks he's a big man now and he loves everyone feeling his muscles and telling him how tough he looks. As you apparantly do. Do you feel like a tough guy? Jumping around in joy over an assasination. Did you dream about it? Or is it simple political opportunism for you? You see your chance for your man to look tough and this is your way of getting back at all those liberals that were saying mean things about Obama's "bipartisanship" (really his conservativism).
Is Matt Yglesias a big progressive pussy unlike you, the tough guy? http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-14/the-war-on-piracy/ Do you and your urban tough guys that like guns plan on prosecuting a war in Somalia? Do you know how many people died there? Via U.S. guns and weapons and from the hands of U.S. military? Are you going to be the tough guy and go fight in Somalia?
by SFHawkguy on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 11:30:29 AM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
"Let me get this straight . . . Liberals that don't want to go around the world starting wars are academic wimps that will never have power so they should stfu, or something . . . ."
That's so wrong, you deserve some sort of commendation.
by rootless2 (sansracine_at_yahoo_dot_fr) on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:17:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
What do you think this is all about?
Bush and military wanted to be able to declare the whole world a war zone.
The legal justification for America's actions in Somalia 2 years ago was that 3 terrorists were responsible for the bombings in Kenya so we had to support a war (involving thousands of deaths) to bring these 3 dudes "to justice". It was subterfuge for the real agenda which was to get involved in the affairs of Somalia and prevent the Islamic Courts movement from taking over the country. It was a bullshit legal justification for starting and participating in a pretty good sized war.
Most of America was blissfully unaware because the pussy Democrats in Congress didn't want to look like pussies so they didn't say anything as our country waged a probably illegal action in Somalia.
Now, we hear we have to send the military in because of pirates.
To me, on its face, it appears the military is once again seeking justification for a wider war in the region that has nothiing or little to do with piracy.
Maybe it is in the U.S. interest to wage war on Somalia. I tend to think not.
But the U.S. Congress should declare war on Somalia if that is the case.
We don't need more bullshit wars for unstated hidden reasons. Especially when the political dynamic is a Democrat politician trying to seize on the popularity of a president at war who appears to like the game of going after the evildoers . . .
by SFHawkguy on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 02:58:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
what is it all about? Hostage rescue. Why are you turning into the Third World War. A man was kidnapped and held for ransom. He was freed. End of story. He didn't kidnap himself you know.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 03:05:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Because I see where this is going. It will be the justification for a greater military adventure in the region. It's the military's way of asserting it's power over Obama.
Crime happens throughout the world and throughout history. Declaring war on crime will not work.
This is simply a way for the military and the U.S. to assert it's ability to act throughout the world. We were like kids at the State Fair shooting gallery last time. Truckloads of Somalis were wiped out 2 years and where did it get us? Do we as a country really know enough to support a warlord over a Islamic fighter in Somalia? Haven't we learned that we don't know enough to pick sides in this battle and our bombs and death and destruction always make it worse?
We are always told that it is heroic actions of the noble Navy sniper (or whatever) that will save us. Then as we start wiping out whole villages or start dropping bombs on the "bad" guys it all goes to hell.
Don't fall for trick.
Pirates are bad. Crime is bad. But this is about a bigger military prescense in the area. That is not good for America. And you guys trying to sucker the U.S. into a wider war are the real un-American traitors. You would have the World in smoking ruins as you cling to your silly sniper fantasies. Did you dream about pulling the trigger yourself?
by SFHawkguy on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 03:14:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
give me a break.
The whole world is clamoring for some solution to the piracy problem. And in the whole wide range of American projection of power, nothing has more legitimacy as our role in securing safe shipping lanes. Working with the Chinese and European nations, we will find a way to make the Suez trip safe for shipping. And we should do that or we're worth a damn as a world power.
It's by far the least offensive aspect of our power.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 03:39:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Killing kidnappers is assassination?
I'm collecting quite a list of STUPID LEFTIST remarks. Maybe I'll make a little book for the holidays filled with these canards. The righties will buy them in droves. $$$$$
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:41:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
I have no idea what happened on that boat. I really don't care. I know enough to be suspect of the story put out by the military. Some heroic sniper [legally] used deadly force to stop an illegal action. Great.
I'm refering to your not-to-hidden glee in sending a bullet into another human because it makes your man look like a tough guy.
And I'm referring to your glee in taking on the crazy left. You get them tough guy. You ever killed another human being? Even if it is legally justified?
You've just been waiting for your chicken hawk in chief to be able to bring in the guns and start shooting so you can battle the pussy peåçenik left and show that Obama is as American as American pie and the sweet justice of a sniper's bullet ripping through some subhuman beast on the horn of that subhuman continent. Kill all of America's enemies. That will surely get the heat off of Obama and we can all forget our collective problems as we breeze in and smoke these thugs. You in?
Write your foolish book about the "stupid left". I can tell this is where you've been heading. You, the real men on the left, will distract the country from its real problems as you and the rest of the tough guys go smoke you some evildoers.
Did you see how we smoked that Somalia scum 2 years ago. It was like a video game. Stupid Muslims riding around like big fat targets that we SMOKED . . .;
Tough guy. How'd that turn out? Or, are you urban progressives too touigh to get involved in un-American debates about war with us peacenik pussies? You know that America will support you as you smoke you some black African Muslim scum? Go for it. It will be a cheap political win for you.
Big man taking on the pussy left. You tell them how silly they are for not realizing that we can sniper assasinate our way out of our problems. Pussies on the left don't realize the power of a sniper assasian--or as Booman would have it--a super-partirot hero gunfighter bringin' American justice to the World.
You show us silly lefties. Write your silly book,
by SFHawkguy on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 02:49:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Your problem is much deeper than pirate killing.
It seems that you see it as unseemly for Americans to celebrate the successful rescue of one of our citizens because the price was the loss of life for three poor brown Muslims. You are putting a whole lot of your personal issues on me where they do not belong. I don't care if you personally are a pussy. I didn't say that you were. I'm just glad that Captain Phillips is safe and sound and that we had a bit of good luck. Politically, it is helpful to the degree that being decisive, lucky, and successful confers benefits on any leader. But the feel-good part of this is that Phillips was rescued unharmed, not that people got killed in the process.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 03:02:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
So now we're STUPID, too?
Fascinating, how quickly the "gloves come off" over other people's opinions. I guess we really "hit a nerve," for some people. Tough shit. That's how that goes.
dd
by lyvwyr101 (lyvwyr101@aol.com) on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 12:47:35 PM EST
Truly Insightful (none / 0)
Progressives that understand power and respect and desire power will do well. Progressives that do not understand, respect, or desire power will remain, by necessity, outside critiquers who always insist they hold the only true progressive values.
Very well stated.
Let's include an observation. Barack Obama clearly belongs in the first group listed above but used superior political skill to convince the second group that he was "one of them."
Ergo, as time goes on, and history tends to write itself, there will be more and more of a reckoning of sorts as more and more of the folks in the second group become more and more aware that Barack Obama is not "one of them."
by Prometheus09 on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 02:30:37 PM EST
Re: Truly Insightful (none / 0)
I consider Obama to be a progressive, and you see signs of it all the time, including most recently his bold action inre Cuba.
But he's not where I want him to be on civil liberties. It's a huge problem that won't go away.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 02:52:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
Implying that someone is mentally unstable because they disagree with you is a cheap shot. Be that as it may-do kidnappers usually kill their victims when they demand ransom?
I know little about the mentality or motives of kidnappers-while so many others seem to know so much-however, wrong though I may be, I thought that exchanging the hostage for money was the dynamic involved.
dd
by lyvwyr101 (lyvwyr101@aol.com) on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 03:16:09 PM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
We are still made up of liberal Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, and skewed toward the female gender.
A significant percentage of us are none of the above. There are a bunch of other religions in the mix, some of which lean heavily left, and of course, the biggest (and fastest-growing) non-Judaeo-Christian faction would be non-religious people.
As far as the pirates go, I don't frankly give a shit. As soon as you pick up a gun and use it to compel behavior, you have left the arena of civilized discourse and are, as far as I'm concerned, a fair target for anyone else with a gun. Those who use violence or the threat of violence to achieve their ends are in no position to complain when someone else uses violence to thwart them. And in the case of four guys with light arms engaging in a standoff with the US Navy, well, let's just say they earned their Darwin Awards just as surely as the folks at Waco and Ruby Ridge did with their hopeless standoffs. It doesn't matter who's right or wrong if one of the participants is unable to grasp simple matters of cause and effect.
by corvus on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 03:42:38 PM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
The Somali pirates were all teenagers, weren't they? There are violent, armed, and dangerous kids everywhere. Not just in Somalia.
No one works harder than law enforcement in dealing with violent and armed kids especially during hostage situations. Perhaps these kids were just not seen as being worth the time or the trouble.
dd
by lyvwyr101 (lyvwyr101@aol.com) on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 04:10:55 PM EST
Re: Progressive Divisions (none / 0)
yes, it appears that the kidnappers were all 19 or younger. Youth might explain their recklessness. Imagine thinking that you can outsmart the US Navy while they tow you in an out-of-gas motorboat and wind up with $6 million in cash.
by BooMan on Tue Apr 14th, 2009 at 04:19:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Progressive Divisions | 36 comments (36 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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