InterVentions

Institutional protection, part 2

2010-02-01T17:59:00.000-05:00

The DOJ has rendered its judgment of John Yoo, et. al, and in a surprise to no one, it is a toothless one. They used 'poor judgment' concludes the report, kind of like when one regretfully chooses fish over steak at dinner or merlot over cabernet. This conclusion evidently waters down the more heady judgment of an earlier draft, which draft had recommended sanctions and possible disbarment.

But that draft was written in the heydays of moral accountability, the end of the Bush years. Now that we live in the we-only-look-forward-and-not-backwards Obama administration, all past government crimes can see the light of day with no fear of liability.

So, now we can see the clear trajectory: DOJ lawyers can be accountable only to the DOJ; and the DOJ will not hold its own accountable because that would harm the DOJ's image.

When are we going to have an independent arbiter for these crimes?

Institutional protection

2009-12-06T14:20:00.000-05:00

Scott Horton over at Harper's reports that the Obama DOJ has filed a brief on behalf of John Yoo in Padilla v Yoo. According to Horton, the brief argues that there are only 3 basic routes by which a lawyer at the DOJ can be held accountable for his official actions. All three routes depend, in essence, on the authority of the DOJ itself, which means that the DOJ is crimainally liable if and only if it finds itself to be so. Needless to say, this is an exceedingly low standard given any institution's inclination to protect itself.

Horton concludes:

The Holder Justice Department’s brief can only be squared with prior DOJ arguments this way: foreign lawyers in foreign Justice Departments have no immunity and can be held accountable, but lawyers who work for us have absolute immunity from any meaningful form of accountability. The path to a renewal of the criminal misconduct of the Bush years is being prepared right now. And Obama Justice Department lawyers are doing the work.

Convictions and dismissals

2009-11-04T13:50:00.001-05:00

Today we learned that Italy has convicted 23 Americans (in absentia) in association with their role in rendering a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan. This is a pyrrhic victory of sorts, since the fugitive Americans will not in all likelihood spend a minute in jail. This is in large measure due to the U.S. government's incessant political pressure, grounded on the belief that it can do whatever it wants in the name of combatting terrorism. This belief reared its ugly head yesterday when the Second Court of Appeals threw out a case brought on by another torture victim of American rendition policy, Maher Arar. His case is familiar to anyone who follows these things. A Canadian citizen, picked up at JFK on a tip from te Canadian government, and inexplicably (unjustifiably) rendered to Syria where he was summarily tortured for about a year. The trip to Syria is not inexplicable if one recognizes the America's unaccountable desire to do whatever is 'necessary' to gather intelligence information. As it turns out, as it often does in these types of cases, the initial tip was ungrounded, and Arar had nothing to do with anything.

Now, evidently, the majority believed that to do otherwise than to dismiss the case would be an egregious form of judicial activism, since Congress has not explicitly penned law prohibiting this particular activity. It's not clear to me on what grounds they say this, since there exists any number of statutes under which a prosecutor could bring the culprits to justice. After all, isn't conspiracy to torutre a crime, on the books. The majority must be asking for something else, namely, the green light by the Exectuve to prosecute its own members. Needless to say, we're still waiting for that. But on the ever useful charge of judicial activism, we can submit, on the contrary, that it is the grossest form of judicial activism to give, as this dismissmal does, carte blanche to a government gone wild. No one but the American government feels the need to dispute the facts of the Arar case, his unquestioned innocence, not even the Canadian government, which has already admitted culpability and settled with Arar. Yet, we continue to our ostrich policies from the highest levels of government down to the citizen on the street who 'just wants the government to protect him'. Well, perhaps Arar believed the same thing, that is, until he lived through the hell that comes from allowing flawed people to possess unchecked and unaccountable power. Do we all have to live through the same before we recognize the flaw here? Is our imagination and historical sense that weak?

Before we raise our hands in salute of the Italians over the Americans, we should note that, in the Italian judgment today, 3 Italians were acquitted on the grounds that their conviction would divulge state secrets. So, there we go again.

The top ten things you didn't know about Iran

2009-10-03T13:00:00.001-04:00

I found Juan Cole's list helpful. Take a look.

Why our media is lame

2009-08-31T14:42:00.004-04:00

Paul Krugman runs down the reasons why media coverage of health care reform is lame. Basically, the reasons can be extended indefinitely to the coverage of any significant policy issue.

We've taken a shot at explaining this here. In the end, the idea is that many journalists are either too dumb or too cowardly to handle these issues. But, we shouldn't forget either that sometimes journalism is an unreasonably dangerous enterprise, and that our culture of violence (e.g. sending death threats to journalists who write intelligently about health care) plays a significant but often invisible role as well.

Newly released OLC memos

2009-08-28T14:33:00.004-04:00

Jack Balkin offers us a quick summary of various parts (new memos here). Nothing new, but every time I look at yet another one of these memos, I just can't believe what I'm seeing. What is the meaning of the rule of law if can be subverted so easily and its violators left free to roam and defended?.

The Responsibility to Protect

2009-08-09T14:34:00.002-04:00

Noam Chomsky's take on the responsibility to protect. As always with Chomsky, an informative and interesting read. We've taken on this topic here and here.

The Collapse of the Prison System

2009-08-05T18:25:00.005-04:00

Yesterday the right-wing philosophy that has ruled the US prison system for the last decades received a long deserved blow. A panel of federal judges issued a mandate to reduce the total number of inmates in the state of California in more than 25% in a period of two years. Notwithstanding future appeals, the decision is the culmination of a long process of deterioration of the prison system in California, once the envy of other US states and nations. Currently the designed capacity of the system is roughly doubled and inmates are accommodated in hallways in makeshift beds.

The consequences of this overpopulation are both cruel and unusual. Inmates spend most of the time locked up as the only way to avoid fights and riots. Contagious diseases spread rapidly among inmates and estimates speak of one death per week due to lack of medical assistance. Human Rights advocates have been warning about severe constitutional violations for years but their cries have faded amid the tough-on-criminals mentality dominating the country. Finally, after years of struggle, the federal justice has come through and ordered an end to these abominations based on the Cruel and Unusual Punishment clause of the 8th Amendment.

This is the first official acknowledgement of the insurmountable failure of the philosophy that has dominated the country since the 80s. It might mark a turning point in the history of the prison system. But dissident voices have been around for a while and the debate has been shaping quietly in the background. The collapse of the system has been documented in almost every front. The rates of incarceration have skyrocketed in the last three decades and starting a few years ago one in every 100 adults in the US is in jail. Moreover, it is wholly unclear whether these costs have produced benefits, for the US leads the developed world in homicide rates.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in Holland, the prison system has also been the subject of intense debate. However, the problem there is one the US wishes it had. The Dutch government has been trying to close 8 prisons for lack of inmates while the Right has tried to persuade the public of the need to put more people in jail. The cost of the initiative will be 1,200 layoffs. Even so, the Right has been unable to stop it. This strikes me as a bit bizarre. On this side of the Atlantic it is always the politicians who are trying to temper down the thirst for blood in the public, not the other way around.

Holland’s problem is envied by others. But things did not always go well for the Dutch prison system. Only a decade ago Holland had followed the American trail and was beset by an overpopulation problem. But they reacted in time and avoided embarrassment. Since then they have increased paroles, implemented electronic surveillance, worked on rehabilitation and increased community service. Plus, undeniably Holland’s eccentric soft-drug policies have had some impact—though not enough to fully account for the phenomenon. In striking contrast with the US, in Holland one of every 1,000 people is in jail.

On a philosophical vein, it is particularly interesting to speculate about the roots of the American mentality with regard to incarceration. Tough-on-criminals policies have been championed by Right-wing groups, usually affiliated with religious views, and echoed by the masses (e.g. 80% of Americans support the death penalty). The explanation of this mentality in terms of the notion of free will is thus natural.

It is plain that religious doctrines usually rely on a substantial notion of free will. But aside from the metaphysical debate, the notion performs double duty in shaping the tough-on-criminals mentality. On the one hand, because individuals are perceived as essentially free, religious doctrines place the whole responsibility for their action on them. There is no need to look at environmental conditions to explain crime: it is simply the criminal’s choice. On the other hand, this has been abetted by the deterrent effect that is expected to ensue from this mentality. Whether or not offenders are fully responsible for their actions, if we hold them fully responsible by having no consideration with them, people in a position to commit crime will have to weigh their chances against this assumption which should deter them from taking criminal action.

But the truth is (as everybody knows except most Americans) that criminals don’t have free will. And this is not a metaphysical statement: criminals are determined by their upbringing, opportunities and even chance. Without a doubt social conditions are causally responsible for the production of crime (as for the production of science, literature, etc). To the extent society causally participates in the production of these evils, it shares the moral responsibility with the wrongdoer for her wrongdoings.

One can ignore reality as much as one wants—even with the hope that ignoring it will magically end crime. But reality is stubborn and ignores those who ignore it. By imprisoning all offenders the US has incapacitated them. But at the same time it has deprived them of the main source of rehabilitation: society. Criminals are not free to choose crime but neither are they free to choose rehabilitation. For too long has the US seen prisons not as functional parts of society but as ostracization facilities. The strategy of ignoring the conditions that produce crime has yielded the expected results: overcrowded prisons and no significant decline in crime. It is time for a change.

Justification for facilitating torture

2009-07-29T22:27:00.006-04:00

The case of the APA and its members who participated in coercive interrogations.

When I read about psychologists who participated in the Bush administration approved interrogation/torture sessions, I recoil in contempt. The contempt is heightened when I read that, since 2002, the American Psychological Association (APA) has effectively condoned and offered justifications for its members’ participation. Is my attitude justified?

Some say no. They do so on the basis of a counterfactual claim: interrogations would have been worse for detainees had it not been for psychologists’ participation. This argument uses the following standard for ethical action: doing something is justified if doing it leads to better outcomes than not doing it. Applied to our psychologists’ participation in torturous interrogation, we can respond, Really? Their participation led to torture and the claim is that without them matters would have been worse. Really, worse than being tortured?

Even if we grant that there are degrees of torture and that psychologists’ participation mitigated the degree of torture, the counterfactual claim is specious because it uses the wrong baseline for comparison. If I torture you less than someone else would have, then that results in a better state of affairs; but, it obviously can’t be used to justify what I am doing. As an aside, compare a similarly specious argument often made for paying the minimum conceivable wage to third-world workers: if I didn’t bring my business over there, they would be unemployed; therefore, since $1/day is better than the nothing they would have gotten, that’s what I’m justified in paying.

At the very least, then, a comparative claim used to justify action must use as a baseline not how things are or would have been without the action, but rather how things would have been if I had acted in all the ways I could have acted. In the case of the torturer, assuming she can stop torturing, that would represent the best outcome (in the case of the entrepreneur, a better outcome would be to pay the just amount which is certainly more than $1/day), and what she does in fact do can be justified only if it is better than that. So, a better standard of justification would be this: my action is justified if doing it is better than anything else that I could have done. I’m not saying that this is the correct standard, but we can use it for our present purposes of evaluating justification for facilitating torture.

We can begin by looking at a brief history of the APA’s ethics code that is relevant to conflict between law and professional ethics. We can note that prior to 2001, the APA’s ethics policy suggested that conflicts be ‘responsibly resolved’ by the psychologist. This open-endedness left it open to the psychologist to follow her conscience in potentially violating positive law. Post 9/11, the policy was revised to read that obeying the law, irrespective of its content, would be sufficient for its members ethical standing. [For a more detailed discussion of the APA’s ethical standards, see Kenneth S. Pope’s, Ph.D., ABPP and Thomas G. Gutheil’s, M.D. article, here.]

Let’s now think of the culpability of individual psychologists and their role in torturous interrogations. If their participation is to be justified, they must claim that their participation leads to better outcomes than anything else they could have done. Is this plausible? The director of the APA’s ethics office, Stephen Behnke, argues for the presence of psychologists as follows:

APA frames a role that psychologists have unique training to fill: the role of observing interrogations in order to guard against ‘behavioral drift’ on the part of interrogators. Behavioral drift, which may arise in high stress situations where there is insufficient ethical guidance or oversight, involves a deviation from professionally and ethically acceptable behavior and so may lead to coercive interrogation techniques. Psychologists, as experts in human behavior, are trained to observe and intervene to prevent behavioral drift.

On this view, the chief benefit of psychologists’ participation lies in their ethical and professional competencies, which competencies can be used to thwart coercion by morally drifting interrogators. I don’t know why Behnke believes psychologists possess particular ethical dispositions and/or competencies, but even if they were uniquely trained in that regard, by the APA’s own ethical standards discussed above, if CIA interrogators ‘legally’ coerced information, no psychologist would have authority to intervene into or report such coercion. The official policy belies the individual justification. Now, if even if we are to imagine a heroic psychologist who bucked the law, this doesn’t absolve the other psychologists who not only ‘monitored’ interrogations but devised, shaped, and directed an entire interrogation regime. This describes the roles of Bruce Jessen and Col. Morgan Banks who are both believed to have deployed their expertise in evading interrogation to develop the C.I.A’s and military’s S.E.R.E interrogation program (survival, evasion, resistance and escape). Can we say of such a psychologist that his participation is better than anything else he could have done?

Suppose neither had participated at all, as surely was open to them, then an entire regimen of coercive interrogations would have been eliminated from existence. And surely that outweighs any conceivable benefit, if such there be, of their actual participation. Behnke might retort that the way the two devised their interrogation regime led to safer methods than would have been available without them. Even if this is true (I’m highly skeptical), it uses the specious comparative benchmark discussed above. Given that their methodology has been established to be torturous, then the correct standard of comparison is not whether without them the CIA would have invented more torturous methods, but rather whether they could have devised effective interrogation methods that shunned any hint of coercion. By the many accounts of experienced FBI interrogators, the most effective method does not involve coercion, and we can surmise that both Jessen and Banks could have built a program around that truth.

Let’s leave aside the case of individuals and turn to the topic of institutional responsibility for facilitating torture. We can note firstly that, in the context of political policy and as compared to individuals, institutions have a far broader range of counterfactual actions available to them. This is partially because they are responsible for many of the rules under which individuals must act and partially because of the great causal powers institutions have in the modern world. This is an often neglected fact and, in my opinion, it implicates institutions in a broader range of responsibilities than is normally acknowledged. We need to keep this in mind when we assess the APA’s actions and omissions.

We know that around 2006 after reporting made clear the coercive nature of U.S. interrogations, the Amercian Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association both issued prohibitions on its members from even being present at interrogations. Against this background, how should we assess the APA’s insistence on the benefits of psychologists’ participation. Given the existing ban by the AMA and the Am Psychiatric Assoc., the APA arguably could have put a stop to the whole sordid mess by following suit. Here’s why: as mentioned above, it is continually argued, both by the heads of the APA and military brass, that participation by psychologists is essential to keeping interrogations safe. Their absence, then, would entail unsafe interrogations. Therefore, at the very least, the APA’s prohibiting member participation would have put considerable political pressure on the administration to discontinue these, by their own lights, unsafe interrogations. So, this is a conceivable, even probable, counterfactual outcome, one which we can use to assess the goodness of the actual outcome. What was the actual outcome? Detainee deaths and psychologically broken human beings. By the standard set out above, the APA’s actions were unjustified, and it should be found culpable for torture.

The issue of individual and institutional culpability for the torture that took place under U.S. control is a complex problem. Nevertheless, the only argument I’ve seen defending the participation by APA members is specious, and the blame goes to the individual psychologists who participated in coercive interrogations but also, and perhaps to an even greater degree, the professional association which endorsed such participation.

One thought too many

2009-07-25T03:19:00.003-04:00

We've all lived through Dick Cheney's outrageousness. Alongside his grim reaper Addington and legal waterboy John Yoo, he's perpetrated many grievances against America's reputation and standing in the world--not to mention against human beings.

But this one makes me angry. The New York Times reports that in 2002 Cheney and his cohorts tried to persuade Bush that military action in an American city was justified. Evidently, sleeper cells were on his mind and nothing short of military action could appease him. In contrast to his almost too cool public appearances, this grim episode proves how absolutely unhinged Cheney was during this time period. To be sure, in 2002 danger was in the air, and we wanted our public officials to be acutely sensitive to the very real possibility that more strikes on domestic soil was immanent. Nevertheless, to contemplate something so drastic in a case where more or less nothing was at stake, demonstrates the underlying paranoia which had seized his mind. Of course, the military strike never took place, evidently due to Bush's cooler, more reasonable mind (sic!). But the fact that it was even seriously deliberated evinces what Bernard Williams once quipped as 'one thought too many'.

Honduras' Dilemma: Does pacifism still make sense?

2009-07-21T21:43:00.004-04:00

When is the use of force justifiable? Is violence ever called for in a political conflict? These are questions the international community has been putting off for days in relation to Honduras. It just looks bad for an international actor to appear before the world supporting violence in a country devastated by poverty. On the contrary, pacifism would seem to always represent reason and temperance. But this can’t be true. For human beings act based on expectations about how their fellows will behave and if pacifism were a reliable expectation then others would unjustly capitalize on it. Some of this seems to be going on in Honduras.

The international community has had much patience with Micheletti’s de facto government. First, the OAS unanimously condemns the coup and demands the restoration of the constitutional order. Next, Honduras is suspended from the organization no longer qualifying for credits from the IADB and the World Bank. Then President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica (a Nobel Peace laureate) convinces the de facto government to negotiate with deposed president Zelaya in order to bridge the gap. Finally, after Arias’ effort proves fruitless, Arias and Isulza manage to cool off Zelaya and convince the parts to engage in a second round of negotiations in Costa Rica. Zelaya was ready to go back to Honduras and call for a popular revolt, bloodshed to follow.

At this point it seems unlikely that Arias’ negotiations will restore Zelaya to office. But anything short of that would create a horrible precedent. Powerful political groups in Latin American countries would learn that they can navigate the international pressure—after all, Honduras could, being the 3rd poorest country in the region. This would be a hotbed for political instability in a continent with a terrible record in this respect.

But unless the people of Honduras kicks Micheletti out of office by force, it seems that the de facto government is planning to get away with their goal (i.e. holding on until the end of the year where elections are scheduled). It seems likely at this point that nothing Arias or Insulza does is going to persuade them of restoring Zelaya to the presidency. This seems to be non-negotiable for Micheletti. On the other hand, the international community can not possible accept anything short of Zelaya's resitution. Hence, we have stalemate, and one that favors the de facto government.

Zelaya’s insistence on peace plays in Micheletti’s favor for their strategy seems to be holding on to power while letting time go by. It was worth trying but dialogue is wearing out and, what’s worse, the de facto government is cynically benefitting form this status quo. Shortly there will be no time to loose and the people of Honduras will have to make a choice. It’ll be either violence or Micheletti.

In praise of courage and in contempt of cowardice

2009-07-15T14:45:00.014-04:00

No one can reasonably expect an individual to risk their lives to track down the truth. Even if courage is a virtue and its expression an essential part of being human, the degree of courage manifested in activists and journalists who endanger themselves to reveal a truth lies beyond duty.

Although we cannot reasonably demand it, such courage always draws the admiration and praise of those who witness it.

The New York Times reported today on an exemplary case, that of human rights activist, Natalya Estemirova. It is a chilling story implicating the Chechen president and Estemerova, his implacable gadfly. Estemerova had made a habit of reporting on human rights abuses in Chechnya, and in the meanwhile angering the powers that be to the extent that they openly threatened her. Estemerova had won the prize Anna Politkovskaya, named after another journalist who made a habit of courageously questioning political authority. Here's a link to an article she wrote shortly prior to her assassination. The article indicates her consciousness that her life would be short. And yet there's a sense of calmness, as if she were writing about her own impending death from the perspective of a journalist covering her own life. She writes that the authorities want her to pretend that certain things she saw did not happen, and responds somewhat curiously, "How can I forget when it did happen?" This is curious only because this sort of forgetfulness is constantly on display in others, and I'll turn to examples of that shortly.

But the incapacity to forget, in particular the inability to will oneself to forget the truth, is a kind of virtue, I would say an expression of the highest virtue: to be unable to do the bad. Estemirova possessed this character trait as well. It was said that she couldn't quit her work, that she was burning up inside over it. This is true even though she faced the realization that her death would mean that her 15 year old daughter would be left alone.

We can turn now to the capacity to forget the truth, and unfortunately it is on full display in certain American journalists who not only are able to forget, they urge others to forget as well. Glenn Greenwald has been at the forefront of highlighting the activities of these journalists and his most recent exemplar is Chuck Todd who 'reports' on the White House for NBC. You see, Todd stands against investigations into the Bush administration's war crimes, their role in the abduction, incarceration, torture and deaths of detainees. To be fair, he has a reason for his stand: such investigations would distract Obama from what truly important, namely, pushing through health care reform and the economy.

Aside from the curiosity of hearing a self-described journalist criticize and attempt to undermine the search to find the truth, we are left with a sense that Todd simply does not, and most likely cannot, recognize the role of the journalist is not to concoct reasons that obscure government malfeasence. Todd is the anti-Estemirova. While she can't help but search out the truth, he cannot will himself to seek it. In the place of the search for truth, Todd portrays himself as a political realist, as an oracle for which investigations will and will not work. Instead of being an investigator, he is a prognosticator. Since he predicts that torture investigations will become, as he says, a 'political football', he deems them a waste of time and detrimental to America's reputation (!?).

But even if this were all true, what does it have to do with whether a journalist should spend her time tenaciously getting to the bottom of the matter? Todd conveniently, and by all indications sincerely, believes it is not reasonable to demand that a journalist risk anything, for prediction is a risk-free game. I started by saying that it is not reasonable to demand that anyone risk their lives for truth, but it surely is a expression of cowardice to be a risk-free journalist. If we praise Estemirova, Politskovskaya and the like, we must contemn the likes of Todd, for the latter are worse than useless: they obstruct the good works of the former.

Shock and Shame in NY

2009-07-10T13:58:00.012-04:00

After the month-long stalemate in the NY State Senate caused by defecting senator Pedro Espada, the distinguished New York congressmen have finally found a way out that tops the embarrassment of their constituency. They have decided to offer Espada (yes, the betrayer!!!) the majority leadership in order to draw him back from the Republican caucus. Yes, believe it. This is not a Buñuel movie or a crooks novel, it is our honorable New York State Senate right now. Because the majority leadership is the highest senate position, short of their wives it is not clear what Republicans can offer Espada to woo him back.

Lessons for Honduras

2009-07-06T19:50:00.009-04:00

As democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya was flying back to Honduras this morning thousands marched to the airport to welcome him. But the warm encounter never took place. Zelaya’s plane was not allowed to land by army vehicles occupying the runaway and the crowd was dispersed by security forces loyal to the de facto authorities of Honduras. The reported result is a 10-year old dead and many injured while the unlawful regime holds on to power for another day.

This is the 3rd or 4th attempt to restore the rule of law in Honduras by peaceful means. A few days ago, Secretary General of OAS, José Miguel Insulza, visited the country in a last-ditch attempt to reconcile positions before expelling Honduras from the organization. Insulza made a career in Chilean politics for his tough political intelligence in handling difficult ideological conflicts (e.g. Isulza was Chile’s minister of foreign affairs when Pinochet was arrested in London at Garzon’s request). And in this case he was able to quickly work out a unanimous repudiation of Honduras’ coup by all American countries—a remarkable achievement if one dwells on Zelaya’s affiliation with Hugo Chávez. However, the de facto authorities of Honduras have proved recalcitrant.

Though the international response has been dramatically different, the internal circumstances that have led to this coup are reminiscent of Venezuela’s 2002 coup or, going further back, of Chile’s 1973 coup. In all three cases there was a democratically elected president (cf. Chavez 1998, Allende 1970) pushing significant reforms to the constitution. The reforms are either targeted at favoring the lower classes or the government quite explicitly vows to do so and the reforms aim at perpetuating the regime. The higher classes are terrified that they are going to loose their privileges, be them legitimate or not.

The result of this conjunction of circumstances is invariably an extreme polarization of the society at hand and eventually social turmoil. In Chile it led to Pinochet’s 17-year dictatorship marked by atrocious violations of human rights. In 2002 the international conditions were significantly different and Carmona’s coup in Venezuela did not survive a week. The international conditions are even less favorable to the de facto government in Honduras but it remains to be seen if Zelaya’s popular support has enough strength to bring him back to office, as the social movement in Venezuela did with Chavez in 2002.

The case of Honduras is also important in another respect: it is the first time since the coup in Venezuela in 2002 that a Latin American country takes an unconstitutional line to resolve its own conflicts. After decades of political turmoil, it seemed that Latin America had finally found a lasting constitutional equilibrium. The coup in Honduras brings out fears of a dark past.

But it also invites reflection on the limits of democracy and its mechanisms of conflict resolution. It seems hard to contest that Zelaya’s government was democratic. However, it was partial to the poor in the social struggle between classes. The economic and political elites felt threatened and feared what they regarded as an illegitimate rewriting of the social contract. But they were outnumbered and the government would eventually be able to achieve this goal. It is understandable (though not for that reason justifiable) that the elites were going to wave their power against what they regarded as unjust and unlawful.

Because the cases of Chile, Venezuela and Honduras led to the same outcome irrespective of the diverse international conditions (cf. the coup in Chile was supported by the US) one could infer that a fracture of these dimensions at the heart of a society almost invariably leads to an unconstitutional outcome. And this is unsurprising if one looks at the problem through the lens of social contract theories. After all, cooperation is the glue that keeps society together. When different factions begin looking at each other suspiciously, not as teammates working for the well-being of all but as ruthless competitors for the scarce resources, all trust is lost. Scruples and knightliness quickly become obsolete in the game of survival and turmoil ensues.

For their own sake countries need to find social arrangements perceived as fair and beneficial by all. This is an old lesson drawn by many philosophers and political scientists since at least Rousseau. But it remains as valid as ever. Honduras confirms it once more. May Honduras learn the lesson in the light of the unfortunate events of this week.

Washington Post death watch

2009-07-03T11:47:00.002-04:00

Wow. What is going on over at the Washington Post?

Evidently, the once proud newspaper attempted to solicit funds in exchange for access to its news division and editorial staff. The events were supposed to be in the form of self-styled 'salons'. According to the nature of things, the newspaper now vehemently denies any impropriety, citing that it would never compromise its news division's integrity: it was all a misunderstanding, the advertising flyer was not vetted, blah, blah, blah.

Via Politico: (the text of the solicitation)

Offered at $25,000 per sponsor, per Salon. Maximum of two sponsors per Salon. Underwriters’ CEO or Executive Director participates in the discussion. Underwriters appreciatively acknowledged in printed invitations and at the dinner. Annual series sponsorship of 11 Salons offered at $250,000 … Hosts and Discussion Leaders ... Health-care reporting and editorial staff members of The Washington Post ... An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done. ... A Washington Post Salon ... July 21, 2009 6:30 p.m. ...

"Washington Post Salons are extensions of The Washington Post brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard," the flier says. "At the core is a critical topic of our day. Dinner and a volley of ideas unfold in an evening of intelligent, news-driven and off-the-record conversation. ... By bringing together those powerful few in business and policy-making who are forwarding, legislating and reporting on the issues, Washington Post Salons give life to the debate. Be at this nexus of business and policy with your underwriting of Washington Post Salons.

Embarrassing at best. At worst, another nail in the coffin of the Washington Post. After the Dan Froomkin debacle, the powers that be are doing all they can to chase away their audience.

Chile and human rights

2009-06-30T00:43:00.005-04:00

Chile becomes the final country in S. America to ratify the Rome Statute. Among other things, this brings Chile in line with the international community on human rights norms involving genocide and crimes against humanity.

Michael Jackson's Uncensored Obituary

2009-06-26T18:53:00.004-04:00

Michael Jackson’s sudden death has drawn the world’s attention all at once onto him likely for the last time. Michael Jackson was unquestionably one of the most famous and admired music icons of the modern world, sharing that pantheon only with a few (e.g. Elvis Presley, The Beatles or Madonna, come to mind). He was a prodigy: a massive-media, pop-culture version of Mozart, only deeply admired worldwide by the rich and the poor alike. And while I understand the fans’ admiration, I myself never was one of his followers. Perhaps because of the objectivity this might confer me, throughout the course of Michael Jackson’s life I couldn’t help the feeling of pity for him. For while Michael Jackson is the prototype of the music idol, whom all the kids and teenagers (and sometimes even a little older ones) imitate and see as the role model, for this very reason he also is an example of the worst abominations of our times. Because he is the pinnacle of modern fame, he also exemplifies in the worst form possible how public attention can corrode a human being.

Michael Jackson was a great pop musician and dancer but he was also a victim of his time. Physically and psychologically Michael Jackson was a freak. He was an eternal child trapped in childish dreams completely unable to understand a world that worshipped him. Now everybody remembers him but only a few days ago he was alone, locked in his Neverland world. In reality, this was not just a bad ending, it was also a bad beginning. Michael Jackson was alone for most of his life incapable of leading a normal life behind the scenes. But this was not the fault of his family and friends. Nor was it his own fault—how could it be, if he never had a choice? Again, Michael Jackson is a product of his times, the result of the unconditional love and admiration of millions who followed him since he was a boy. His case should give us food for thought regarding the values of modern society and the relentless aspiration to fame. Goodbye Michael, may you find peace finally.

death of the Washington Post

2009-06-22T14:48:00.003-04:00

I used to read the Washington Post because of its good coverage of Guantanamo and detainee treatment. But I just heard (been tucked away in a technology-free zone) about its firing of Dan Froomkin and well that spells the death of the WaPost for me.

As usual, Glenn Greenwald has some insightful points to make on a topic he writes about quite often. In short: Froomkin was too much of a real journalist for the Washington Post's editorial board to handle, because according to it, the function of journalism is to cater to the prevailing political masters.

Yoo civil lawsuit allowed to proceed

2009-06-17T05:51:00.006-04:00

See here. Also, see the Washington Post's editorial criticizing the decision. Its argument is summed up by the following:

Moreover, Mr. Yoo provided legal opinions on what he believed the law allowed the executive to do, but he did not make the final policy decisions. Allowing Mr. Padilla's case to proceed could have a chilling effect on the ability of government lawyers to give candid, good-faith advice for fear of being held personally liable.

I've addressed the distinction between advice and policy here. In Yoo's case, that distinction doesn't apply in the usual way, and the Washington Post's editorial is, once again, an utter failure.

New York, 3rd World State

2009-06-12T15:40:00.008-04:00

I have vast experience in 3rd World politics and can testify that the spectacle we have witnessed in the New York State Senate this week easily matches the worst episodes of corruption I have known about in Latin America or Africa. Two Democratic senators were apparently "persuaded" by a tycoon (who is not even part of the senate or any political party but who recently financed some important democratic state campaigns) to defect from the Democratic party allowing Republicans to seize control of the closely divided chamber.

This billionaire patron was indignant at the Democratic majority because of their plan to raise taxes on the rich to compensate the spiraling state deficit. Unable to deter them from going ahead with their plan, he opted for the healthy alternative of inviting a couple of senators with God knows what incentives to move to the opposite party.

In case this is not fishy enough, one of the defecting senators had been drawn to the Democratic side not long ago with promises of power and protection from the countless charges of corruption that he has faced lately. The other defecting senator was recently indicted with charges of having stabbed his companion.

You gotta wonder what the heck is going on in New York. The current governor, David Paterson, replaced the elected governor, Eliot Spitzer, who resigned last year after being linked to a prostitution ring. Like in the worst crooks movies, New York politics seems to be dominated by an underworld of corruption and personal interest. Democrats have taken legal measures against the Republican coup and a judge is set to deliberate on the issue next week. Whatever the outcome of this mess, the situation illustrates the need to clean the sordid political landscape of New York State as soon as possible.

Boumediene 2: Bush 0

2009-06-08T20:07:00.008-04:00

This is what Lakhdar Boumediene's homemade t-shirt reads, as related in his recent interview with ABC News. It refers to his two victories over the morally bankrupt Bush administration who willfully and needlessly kept him at Guantanamo for 7 years. The first victory was SCOTUS's judgment in Boumediene v. Bush which enabled him to get judicial review. The other was U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon's decision to free him upon reviewing the 'thin reed' of evidence the administration had against him.

Boumediene makes the following remarkable statement about the duration of his detainment:

"The first month, okay, no problem, the building, the 11 of September, the people, they are scared, but not 7 years. They can know whose innocent, who's not innocent, who's terrorist, who's not terrorist," he said.

"I give you 2 years, no problem, but not 7 years."

It's remarkably generous to offer 2 years of your life for a gross mistake (assuming that it's just that), especially given the credible charge of being tortured whilst incarcerated. But leaving that aside, Boumediene's point should strike a mortal blow to any proponent of executive privilege who wants to assert that the executive is better qualified than any other branch of government to handle matters of war--a standard talking point for the right. After 7 years, the executive could not (or would not) determine Boumediene's innocence. On the other hand, it took Judge Leon only 5 months after Boumediene v Bush to sift through all the evidence and render his judgment (PDF file). In which institution would you place more trust?

Berlusconi's Innocent Villa

2009-06-05T15:45:00.004-04:00

After Veronica Lario, Belusconi's wife, filed for divorced accusing him of shameless sexual corruption, Italian paparazzi caught the Italian president enjoying an "innocent" afternoon (as he himself referred to the pictures) with some of his friends (here).

On American Ignorance

2009-05-30T23:20:00.001-04:00

An interesting article on a topic we've visited before.

The Morality of Obama's Guantanamo Plan

2009-05-26T13:35:00.003-04:00

No doubt Obama’s plan to close the Guantanamo Base prison is a step forward in fighting the threat of terrorism. Dick Cheney resents this fact for it entails that his own decisions were steps backward. But at this point who cares what Cheney says other than his reactionary cronies? After all, Cheney’s arguments do not pass a minimum test of cogency and vision. Nonetheless Obama’s plan brings to the surface a fundamental question that had been overshadowed by the numerous obscenities of the Bush administration. This is the question of preemptive incarceration.

Obama’s plan consists in transferring Guantanamo detainees to maximum-security prisons within the US borders but it does not include a discernible answer for the legal abominations these cases represent. During the presidential campaign, McCain warned Obama of the intricacies the new president was going to find once he had access to classified information on the Guantanamo detainees. And for all his gaffes, the facts seem to confirm McCain’s forecast. For what was once determination in Obama to close Guantanamo has now turned into feeble compromise. Barring an unexpected change of course, it seems that Obama’s plan is only symbolic vindication: Guantanamo detainees will be transferred to American soil but kept in the legal limbo they’ve dwelled for years.

God knows what information Obama and his legal advisors have come across in revising the Guantanamo cases. But I think it unlikely that anything short of imminent danger for the country would have persuaded Obama of the need to continue with this legal farce. So let’s suppose for the sake of the argument that Guantanamo detainees represent an imminent threat to the US. If they had not yet committed any punitive action, is it lawful and/or moral to restrain them?

Here we find the two traditional frameworks in philosophy of punishment giving opposite advice. According to the Utilitarian framework, punishment is morally justified by its beneficial consequences. Utilitarians typically mention the incapacitation of the offender as among these consequences. Thus it would appear permissible, according to this framework, to incarcerate an individual on the sole grounds that he or she represents a threat for the US.

The alternative to the Utilitarian framework is Retrubitivism. Roughly, Retributivism is the view that punishment is justified by an abstract balance representing our sense of justice. When somebody breaks the law he or she has upset that balance and punishment is required in order to restore it. It straightforwardly follows from this view that we are justified in punishing only those who have broken the law. Therefore, restraining Guantanamo detainees would be wholly immoral even if they are indeed a threat to the country and we know it, for they have yet to act on their impure intentions.

It would be presumptuous of me to attempt to adjudicate between these competing frameworks. Generations of philosophers have passed unable to do so. However, it is fair to say that even many Utilitarians, while rejecting the whole Retributive package, accept the idea that only the guilty should be punished. Guantanamo detainees cannot be guilty of anything yet as they have been denied the nowadays luxury of a due process. And having bad intentions is not recognized as a crime by any legal code. As a consequence, it seems really hard to reconcile Obama’s Guantanamo plan with any accepted morality of punishment.

Politicians are not only beholden to such abstractions as justice but also to their country. It seems therefore unlikely that Obama (or anybody for that matter) is going to clean this mess. No doubt politicians in positions of power have a responsibility to protect their country. But more importantly, the American electorate is extremely sensitive to the issue. Republicans have traditionally exploited the issue of national security to a point of absurdity. And Cheney as well as the Republican minority in Congress have made it clear that they will continue to pound it. This leaves the Obama administration with no margin to correct the abominations created by Republicans themselves.

As Nancy Pelosi has lately insisted, there is an important distinction to be drawn between those who caused this state of affairs and those who have failed to straighten it. There can be no doubt that Republicans fall in the former category and thus carry most of the responsibility for jeopardizing the Constitution of the US. However, they also carry some of the responsibility for politicizing the problem now in the hands of the new administration blocking any conceivable solution for it. As Eugene Robinson suggests, in history books hundreds of years from now Republicans will have to be charged with the decline of the US.

Advice, policy and action

2009-05-19T15:09:00.003-04:00

One major line of defense John Yoo offers for his role in torture relies on the distinction between advice and policy (authority to prescribe action). (See the prepared statement he made before his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee back in 2008).

The thought is that setting policy, but not giving advice, is related to action in a responsibility determining way. This is because policy not only endorses an action (as right/wrong, viable/unviable, legal/illegal), it motivates by being the reason for the action. In short, policy can be a constitutive part of an action which depends on it; it is the reason which explains the action. This connection explains why we tend to believe that if an action like torturing someone is wrong, then the authoritative policy which directly calls for it is also wrong.

On the face of it, advice is different. In an advisory role, the content of the advice is not taken to have motivational force. Additionally, I may not be advising you to do anything in particular but rather just laying out what I take to be your options. This is what John Yoo claims of his legal advice: it merely laid out an interpretation of legal options, and it was neither his intent nor within his authority to prescribe which options, if any, are to be taken. Yoo claims it follows that he cannot be held liable for the actions of those who were directed by policy to act in accordance with such advice. This is because, we can say, a ‘responsibility’ gap exists between advice and action, the gap filled by an independent judgment as to whether to follow the advice. So, if someone must be held accountable for the torture, it should be those who formulated the policy and carried it out. They have a direct responsibility bearing relationship to the vicious act.

Let’s examine the claim about advice. When someone asks for practical advice, it implies that he has not made up his mind on what to do. Typically, upon being offered a piece of practical advice, the advisee deliberates, takes the advice into consideration among all the other known considerations, and arrives at a decision about what to do. The process of deliberation arguably makes the advisee solely responsible for the ultimate decision. Plausibly, this shields the advisor from responsibility.

However, the conclusions are different when the advisor has practical authority over his advisee. Usually we distinguish between contexts of advice and authority, because advice is not often taken to be authoritative, but this is not a conceptual point, but rather just an expression of how we talk. When someone has practical authority over another, his pronouncements/directives/assertions possess preemptory status among the other reasons the advisee may have. That is, whatever other reasons the advisee may have, they are overruled (and are taken to be overruled) by the authority. In this context, when an advisor makes a pronouncement, he understands it to constrain and/or function as a sufficient reason for action.

What was the context in which Yoo wrote the OLC memo? As Yoo himself notes in his testimony before the Committee, his advice was requested in a very particular context: whether the recently (at the time) captured Abu Zubaydah could be subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques, given that such techniques, so Yoo claimed, would be extremely helpful to and desired by the executive.

But the relationship between executive and the OLC is not one of desire satisfaction, it is the latter’s job to constrain the actions of the former. This is confirmed by the particular institutional role the OLC occupies within the executive branch. The following statement from the OLC ‘best practices’ statement is relevant:

“Our Office is frequently called upon to address issues of central importance to the functioning of the federal Government, and, subject to the President’s authority under the Constitution, OLC opinions are controlling on questions of law within the Executive Branch” (emphasis added).

That is, should there be any dispute on how to understand (and hence how to obey) a law, OLC memos are preemptory. This applies to everyone in the executive branch, including the President.

This undermines John Yoo’s basic defense. Although his advice did not take the form of policy, it went beyond the typical function of advice to supply mere considerations for deliberation. Due to the institutional authority granted to him, his advice took on an imperative like form.

Given his knowledge of the advisee’s motivations (we already know of the ‘principals meetings’ during which this whole cabal got together to discuss strategies to implement torture), Yoo’s affirming advice must be recognized to be motivational—and hence a part of the advisee’s decision to formulate the torture policy. This is what makes him culpable for his advice.

Torture and Pragmatism in Washington

2009-04-28T10:31:00.011-04:00

If one focuses one can smell the reluctance in the political atmosphere to hold the Bush administration accountable for their systematic use of torture. This reluctance can be explained by various considerations such as the ferocious battle Republicans are likely to put up in Bush and Cheney’s defense; the subsequent loss of political capital for the Obama administration; etc. These are more or less practical difficulties. But there is, according to a Washington Post’s editorial, a matter of principle too.

The principle is that an incoming administration does not prosecute previous administrations for what they did “within the channels of government” as long as they did it for the sake of the country. In the absence of grounds to suspect selfish motivations we should measure the previous administration with a very loose bar (or, more precisely, a very loose legal code). This principle, the editorial claims, is a tradition in the US that has fostered cooperation between Democrats and Republicans and prevented them from seeking revenge for past political skirmishes. It prescribes that incoming administrations should scratch off the page and look the other way while doing so. Doing the opposite, the Post suggests, would encourage political vendetta and chaos.

Let us explore the implications of this argument.

First of all, the principle deprives high government officials of any kind of accountability. From the viewpoint of high government officials, there is no legal limit to how they can pursue the interest of the country. True, the country does have a constitution but if at some point it becomes an obstacle in seeking the interest of the country, the principle implies that high government officials can sidestep it without having to answer for that. But unless I’ve been confused all these years, the whole point of having a constitution is that nobody can’t ignore it when convenient, not even the president.

The reasons why you can’t ignore the Constitution are not mere patriotic mythology. The Constitution is literally the foundation of a country. It is the basic institutional framework that shapes what the nation is over and above a piece of land with inhabitants. Toying with the Constitution is therefore to discredit all the institutions of the nation including the nation as a whole. What can be a more serious threat to a nation than a massive loss of faith in it by its citizens, i.e. its own delegitimization? Is terrorism more dangerous?

But not only do fellow citizens lose faith in their country when they see their authorities manipulating the Constitution, so do international observers. The principle is completely oblivious to this fact. However, the US cannot possibly succeed in such an interdependent world as we witness today without forging honest alliances with other countries. Playing loose with the Constitution, as the principle prescribes, projects an image of unprincipled mercenaries in relentless pursue of their selfish interest. This is a hotbed for hatred and terrorism. Moreover, this makes it harder to find allies and, more importantly, to expect loyalty from them.

In fact, much of the mistrust toward the US in the Middle East and Latin America (to mention only a couple of cases) can arguably be explained by the systematic application of the principle. For example, the disclosure of private communications between Nixon and Kissinger in the 70s has revealed political plotting hardly reconcilable with the Constitution in their effort to stop the spread of Socialism in South America. One may debate the legitimacy of such a goal, but there can be no doubt that the inhumanity of the methods alongside the impunity of those who ordered them created a sensation of powerlessness and bitterness toward the US that has hindered cooperation with South American countries up to these days.

Aside from the implications of the principle, its motivation is also debatable. The risk the principle is design to ward off is that of permanent political vendetta and chaos as a result of giving incoming administrations permission to prosecute previous ones when their decisions were beside the Law. But should we assume, as the principle does, that every incoming administration is going to misuse their right to revise the previous one in order to get political benefit? Maybe—if there were no penalty for defamation. In legal systems where there are suitable penalties for defamation people make sure that they accuse others only when they have strong grounds to support their accusations. I don’t see why American politicians would be the exception.

I envision a much different outcome of dropping the principle. I believe the result would be that high government officials would have to be much more careful to stay within the limits of the Law. There would probably be some accusations here and there, some of them unjustified perhaps, but they would only serve to teach politicians to be impeccable during their time in office. In short, rather than vendetta and chaos, I think dropping the principle would encourage transparency and the rule of law.

Why then has the principle become a tradition in the US—as the Washington Post naively asserts? The fact that the reason offered by the Post is so dubious suggests less honorific motivations. The persistence of the principle could also be explained by a secret culture of extreme pragmatism in Washington. If politicians in Washington took the rule of Law as defeasible when governing requires it, the principle would serve as a secret code of etiquette to preserve that chance for future presidents and high government officials. In other words, incoming presidents would not seek legal measures against their predecessor, even when they deserved it, in order to be able to play that card themselves.

If this speculation were true, it would be quite serious. Pragmatism can be useful on occasion, but, taken to these extremes, it can also be sign that the spirit of the nation is in decline (cf. the last centuries of the Roman Empire). Obama seems to be of a different kind than most politicians in Washington. He seems clear and transparent, unaided by stratagem. Let’s hope that Obama will once for all drop the principle and restore a culture of transparency in Washington by going after the obvious violations to the Constitution that took place during Bush’s administration.

Matias Bulnes, NYC

Challenging Cheney

2009-04-23T02:02:00.004-04:00

I don't believe the question of whether America's torture regime is legitimate rests on the question of its effectiveness in gathering intelligence. Nevertheless, it is intelligible for someone to make that question the decisive question to ask and answer.

Knowing this, and with his usual bravado, Cheney announced that he formally requested the release of classified memos which, he claims, conclusively demonstrate the effectiveness of torture in providing actionable intelligence. In a NY Times Op-Ed, and in an apparent response to Cheney's bravado, Ali Soufan, the FBI agent who interrogated Abu Zubaydah, claims that valuable intelligence gathered from this interrogation arrived via traditional, i.e. non torturous, methods. Additionally, he makes the following claims,

there was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics...Defenders of these [torturous--mtn] techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.

If true, this would put the final nail in the coffin of the torture regime. It yielded literally nothing of value, and we have come to the end of intelligible rationales for its existence. And what is left but to conclude with Paul Krugman, if one hadn't already, that the authors of this regime are monsters.

Question of responsibility

2009-04-21T18:16:00.003-04:00

I believe that there is a significant moral distinction between interrogators and those who legally authorized them to torture.

The difference is two-fold. First, the authors of torture regime are authors. They shaped and otherwise made possible the kinds of actions in question. Generally speaking, we believe that the authors of actions are chiefly responsible, and hence chiefly to blame, for them. On my understanding, the CIA frequently abstained from certain techniques and carried them out only after requests for legal guidance were returned in the affirmative. So, from what we know, the following counterfactual is true: were it not for the OLC memos and the political authority of Cheney’s office, America’s torture chambers would not have existed (I’m leaving aside the evidence that it existed in places other than Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo). Secondly, there is a significant difference in authority and power between the two classes, and this can generate conditions of duress which can be mitigating and perhaps excusing. There was an incredible amount of pressure placed on the intelligence community to manufacture results, and given the structures of authority in place, that pressure could not have been just ignored—at least not without consequences.

To be sure, these two considerations alone won’t settle the whole question of responsibility if only because the interrogators aren’t automatons—they too author their own behaviors. This is quite clear in interrogation, since it leaves much room for maneuverability and hence deliberation—and all this needs to be decided upon, and hence authored, by each individual interrogator. Moreover, the degree of exerted pressure is unknown, and independently of that, it is difficult to imagine that it amounted to a form of duress which would be excusing. In the end, one imagines, they could have walked away from the torture chambers and obeyed the Socratic doctrine to do no wrong intentionally.

Nevertheless, with the question of blame left open for the interrogators, we can still make the comparative judgment that the degree of culpability is greater for the authors of the torture regime than for those who carried it out. Another way of seeing this is to say that it was the legal duty of the interrogators to carry out legally authorized directives, but not the legal duty of the authors to write what they did. In fact, as many lawyers have pointed out, the memos express legally incompetent advice. Even if we don't share the latter judgment, the distinction in obligations offers yet another not insignificant dimension along which to damn the lawyers before the interrogators.

I believe both points speak against the view, held by Spain’s attorney general, that if prosecutions are to go forward, they should be launched against individual interrogators and not the authors of the regime. Obama has finally made it clear (even after his attack dog Rahm Emanuel suggested otherwise just last weekend) that he believes otherwise. In response to questions this morning, he asserted that any investigation and prosecution of the torture authors will be, as it should be, the Attorney General's office to decide and pursue. Hopefully, and as early indications of Holder already suggest, our AG is less politically driven than Spain's AG.

Flip-flop

2009-04-17T17:15:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, Obama said that the failure to release the torture memos "could contribute to an inaccurate accounting of the past, and fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States." This suggests that their eventual release should settle some questions. I suggested that this was a sort of preemptive attack on Spain's criminal investigations into who authorized what. Lo and behold, today, after just last week announcing that they would pursue indictments, Spanish prosecutors did a flip-flop. According to Spain's Attorney General, Cáandido Conde-Pumpido, any prosecution should focus on the interrogators, not the legal advisors. He therefore believes the case is flawed and does not recommend its pursuit. Evidently, the career prosecutors have been overruled.

Is there a connection between Obama's statement and the Spanish AG's decision? Inquiring minds want to know.

When asked by reporters about the case, Obama gave his standard, "I'm a strong believer that it's important to look forward and not backwards," claptrap. It's time he talk to the public like adults and offer a reasonably complete picture of his views on this matter. Leadership requires more than clever aphorisms; we need guidance and transparency.

Uncovering and maintaining secrets

2009-04-15T13:48:00.008-04:00

Update:

Obama has authorized the release of the 3 'torture memos'. They are available here. I've quickly gone through the memos, and there is very little redaction (although, there seems to be a page or two missing--I'm not sure of that though). Obama also released a written statement about the memos. Here is a relevant bit, explaining his reasoning:

...I believe that exceptional circumstances surround these memos and require their release.
First, the interrogation techniques described in these memos have already been widely reported. Second, the previous Administration publicly acknowledged portions of the program – and some of the practices – associated with these memos. Third, I have already ended the techniques described in the memos through an Executive Order. Therefore, withholding these memos would only serve to deny facts that have been in the public domain for some time. This could contribute to an inaccurate accounting of the past, and fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States.
In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution. The men and women of our intelligence community serve courageously on the front lines of a dangerous world. Their accomplishments are unsung and their names unknown, but because of their sacrifices, every single American is safer. We must protect their identities as vigilantly as they protect our security, and we must provide them with the confidence that they can do their jobs.

Three points. First, as I suggested in my original post, a refusal to release the memos would just be an exercise in failing to acknowledge what's already known. Despite pressures to do otherwise, Obama recognized this. Secondly, Obama seems to have found a politically intelligible position. In releasing the memos, he's placating those who demand transparency in government; and, by ensuring interrogators not be prosecuted, he placates the career intelligence agents whose trust he requires. Thirdly, the bit about fueling inflammatory and erroneous assumptions may have been a preemptive attack on the Spanish prosecutors who are seeking indictments of the authors of these memos. The quest for indictments is surely inflammatory, but in what sense is it erroneous? Surely, there is a distinction between the lawyers who drafted these memos and the interrogators who relied on their legal purport. The legitimacy of the interrogators' actions rested entirely on the authority of these memos--and these lawyers knew exactly that when they penned them.

In his statement and in the context of a call to unity, Obama said that "this is a time for reflection, not retribution." I think it would be retributive, in the sense of vengeful, to seek the prosecution of interrogators who relied on the legal advice of authorized lawyers. This would be a mistake. On the other hand, retribution, in the sense of retributive justice, has its legitimate place, because it is a constitutive part of applying the rule of law. For several reasons, it would be a serious mistake to merely reflect on past illegal behaviors. Firstly, retribution, and not mere reflection, is a more effective means to ensuring that these heinous power drunk behaviors don't occur in the future. Secondly, irrespective of incentivizing future deliberations, the resentment caused by the torture regime will not just go away by reflection alone. It is a truth about human beings that 'moral repair' or the achievement of normalizing relations between victim and victimizer requires punishment or, at the very minimum, a full account. A victim can't get that through 'reflection'; s/he needs a social space in which truths are investigated and properly aired by trusted authorities. It doesn't sound like Obama understands this, either because his optimism prevents it, or else his political radar signals that it is a political non-starter.

----------------------------

Spanish investigators are pressing ahead with their prosecution of the American torture crew, including Yoo, Addington and Gonzales.

Apparently, adherence to the rule of law and the desire to uncover the truth about torture does not extend to the other side of the pond. The Wall St. Journal reports that Obama is leaning towards keeping classified 3 'torture memos', ones which he previously promised he would disclose (not to mention that there is an outstanding court order for him to do so).

To be sure, there exist various political reasons for maintaining darkness. Chief amongst them, evidently, is Obama's desire to keep rank and file members of the CIA in the fold. Fearing alienation, he is balancing citizen's need to know with his ability to maintain control over a key intelligence agency. This is an intelligible desire.

However, it is difficult to see how willfully maintaining darkness is a winning strategy, given the circumstances. First, there is no end to the grief he is going to face should he align himself with this sordid past. Secondly, the most credible source in existence on such matters, the Red Cross report, has already unequivocally asserted that torture took place under US hands. And, we already know, more or less, the identities of the main players involved in authorizing this torture. In keeping certain details secret, Obama would be doing little but failing to acknowledge what is already known. Of course, it is not known to the larger public--and maybe that's what the triangulation is about--but ostrich-style politics can't coexist in the same world as the Google search bar. In the Google world, knowledge is but a few keystrokes away, and maintaining secrets, especially when they have nothing to do with you, is a political loser.

Competing conceptions of human rights by MT Nguyen, The Empire, CA

2009-04-14T00:38:00.009-04:00

What counts as a human rights violation? Or, alternatively, What counts as a fundamentally illegitimate government action?

These are very important questions. Answering them is a condition of our capacity to understand and critique political authority.

I think there are two basic and distinct approaches to these questions, one moral and the other political. While the moral approach has its inherent appeal, I am no longer convinced that it can be sustained. Its answers and the methods by which it arrives at them are, so to speak, too facile. As applied to the current controversy over America’s interrogation regime, for example, its argument is too short: torture is morally impermissible; therefore, it is politically illegitimate. On the other hand, the political approach, though it arrives at the same negative conclusion, avoids this problem by correctly bringing more considerations into the fold while at the same time, in a way I’ll describe, integrating the moral point of view--but in a subordinate role to which morality is not accustomed. I'm not entirely convinced by the political approach, and neither am I entirely clear what it involves, but it strikes me as more relevant and applicable to our heterogeneous political world.

The most common approach to human rights is expressly moralistic. It rests on a moral picture of human beings, and sets to answer our questions by reference to violations which would undermine or constrain human beings (as painted by that picture). This approach is moralistic partly because it places moral characteristics front and center, particularly dignity and autonomy. Additionally, the approach wants to understand the concept of human rights as a moral concept. The study of human rights is fundamentally the study of a part of morality; and, the application of a human right requires only a recognition of the relevant moral principles in conjunction with a perception of the salient moral reasons.

On this approach, all one needs to evaluate the legitimacy of a political decision is to know its moral standing.

For some time now, I’ve found this moralistic approach laudatory. The connection between morality and a human rights violation, crudely put, is this: a political activity constitutes a human rights violation whenever it expresses a morally illegitimate exercise of political authority. This formula allows us to arrive at an assessment of political activities in a ‘pure’ manner, expressly setting aside all irrelevant considerations, i.e. all non-moral considerations. Moreover, since morality takes itself to apply everywhere rational activity exists, the approach’s scope is basically total and unconstrained. That is, anyone can transport the moral viewpoint, correctly construed, and use it to judge political activity wherever and whenever it exists.

As operating on political institutions and its activities, the moralistic approach has the great and heavily advertised advantage of being outside of what it judges. Often and clearly so, this is the correct standpoint. For example, this external view constrains the human tendency to exaggerate the weight and importance of self-serving considerations, e.g. nationalistic ones. Another advantage is morality’s integrity or holism. The univocal nature of its pronouncements and its refusal to countenance compromise are what make morality so beautiful and appealing.

This is nicely exemplified, for example, in the character of Socrates. Unlike all true statesmen, Socrates cares little that a political decision is necessary to save the state if that decision is, judged from the standpoint of the moral virtues, wrong. He couldn’t make any such decision because, being the virtuous man he was, he couldn’t see the reasons in favor of it. Most of us understand Socrates’ moral incapacities as virtues, and we have a strong tendency to judge political life from this perspective. We recoil, for example, when we witness President Obama’s evident betrayal of Senator Obama’s promises on government transparency. We applaud, on the other hand, the alacrity with which he announced the closure of Guantanamo (but, let us not forget, not Bagram). Here the expressions of blame and praise spring from the same moral source. Just as lying for political gain warrants moral repugnance, curbing torture deserves moral praise.

Our admiration for Socrates’ integrity should not blind us, however, to what it sacrifices. In particular, Socrates understood that he could never be a politician. He predicted that his inability to compromise, operating within the political, would have meant an even quicker death than he actually suffered. We can learn something here. I believe Socrates rightly sensed the deep incompatibility between moralism and the political. His a(nti-) political stance isn’t just a peculiar fact about himself, it belies the thought that the political can be adequately evaluated by just the moral standpoint. If so, then the moral incapacities which are so valuable to correct individual behavior become vices in political decision-making.

Is there another approach?

The philosopher, Bernard Williams, constructed a concise, expressly political, formulation of what constitutes a fundamentally illegitimate policy: (roughly) any governmental policy the effect of which makes the existence of government worse than its absence. Government exists to solve and resolve certain basic social problems; but, when its policies make government appreciably worse than the problem, that amounts to a paradigm case of a human rights violation. In short, when political authority approximates unmediated coercive power, we have an illegitimate exercise of state power; we have a human rights violation.

It is a weakness of our current human rights regime that, philosophically, it is grounded in moral concepts like human dignity and autonomy. Although morally powerful, these concepts are politically stunted (especially in America which has made no explicit use of them). Williams’s political formulation avoids this problem because, like his ethical approach in general, it embraces minimalism and avoids moralism. It does this by working only with concepts like power, coercion and authority. These are taken to be non-moral concepts which nevertheless any conceivable political construction must employ. Even if it is true that criminals or terrorists have no dignity, and that no accommodation is made for an individual's moral autonomy, we can still hold that, in its ambitions, a government can overreach and, in taking action, make itself more monstrous than the problem its ambitions attempt to resolve. Anyone can make this comparative judgment, irrespective of their substantive moral standpoint.

Even an amoral fanatic like Dick Cheney recognizes this. You can see it in how he defends the interrogation regime no doubt he had a hand in shaping and making into policy. In numerous interviews, Cheney virtually contemns moral considerations emphasizing instead the mantra that his methods directly helped thwart untold (literally, since the details of the supposed upside were, and continue to be, conveniently classified) number of attacks. If he's telling the truth, it would at least render intelligible how Bush’s government did not make itself worse than the problem. This is true even if it does not make the regime any more morally acceptable, for his is not an attempt at moral justification. Cheney’s defense is expressly political and offers a story (Williams calls this type of story a legitimation story) for how an interrogation regime can take the shape his did and yet maintain its legitimacy. In particular, this story places great stress on the necessary connection between these policies and the basic responsibility of government to protect its citizens.

As I suggested, the moral approach to assessing a Cheney-style legitimation story is too quick. Since no decent human being could help but arrive at the conclusion that torture is morally repugnant and hence wrong to do no matter the context, adopting this viewpoint leaves us with the puzzle of how a regime taking this shape could sustain itself over so many years and even after the facts about the nature of the interrogations have been known for nearly 5 years. Since ignorance of the morally relevant facts is not at issue, the only way out of the puzzle is to point to a virulent moral weakness induced by fear. For reasons I cannot get into, I find this utterly implausible.

The political approach’s evaluation goes beyond a narrow moral assessment of the interrogations themselves. It takes in all the political conditions required to make interrogations of this type possible. In the case of our torture regime, here are some of them. At the highest levels of government (not to mention the lower levels), generally there existed a pervasive and mendacious secrecy; unendingly imaginative forms of obfuscation and, when these failed, outright lies were told to Congress, to the courts, to foreign governments, to domestic and international organizations, and to the American public; powerful and influential members of Congress colluded with the executive to maintain the regime as well as pass laws designed to offer legal cover for its criminal acts; international covenants the US ratified were repeatedly violated and, in general, our moral and legal obligations were repeatedly and maliciously ignored, thereby making a mockery of international law; when they weren’t kept completely in the dark, institutions like the press, the OLC and the DOJ were subverted and/or used to propagandize; and, in sum, the domestic law and, really, our entire legal tradition was turned on its head and perverted.

All this is interconnected and interlocked to support the government’s project to manufacture the authority needed for its interrogation regime. When we have all of this before us, it is difficult to see how the Bush/Cheney government did not make itself worse than the problem it attempted to solve. The secrecy with which it carried out its policies points to the explanation for its illegitimacy. In particular, it rests to a large extent on how we understand ourselves here and now: no modern legitimation story can depend on the belief that political good and the means to it are the sole provenance of political authority. So, even if we are charitable and entertain the notion that the principal architects of this government aimed at the benefit of the citizenry, to protect us—if necessary, from ourselves—that alone wouldn’t serve to legitimize anything (this remains true even if, more fantastically, the regime served to actually protect us). This is a political and not a moral explanation, but through it we can see how the political can acknowledge the moral. It does so not necessarily as an independent constraint (that would be moralism all over again), but rather because its field of operation can, and in our case does, involve beings whose self-understanding includes morality. Lastly, this helps explain why Machiavellianism, although it can make a temporary appearance, can’t really work for us. Only a fanatic can suggest that we should just discard the moral understanding of ourselves and return to a ‘simpler’ time (if it ever existed) during which statesmen, with their good intentions, could run things without running them by citizens. This is fanaticism, not because it is immoral (although that’s a conceivable reason), but rather because any such suggestion is now beyond the political pale. If it is to exist at all, it must hide and remain underground, just as the interrogation regime and its instigators have been doing. And as with all forms of fanaticism, killing it doesn’t require moral arguments, but rather a spotlight.

Let's do it

2009-04-08T14:09:00.007-04:00

birds do it

bees do it

even educated fleas do it

let's do it...

Former president of Peru, Alberto Fujimora, convicted and sentenced to 25 years in his own country for human rights violations. It's a first in history. Essentially, he was convicted on charges of authorizing kidnapping, torture and murder. Sound familiar? (For the murder part, see Seymour Hersh's assertions about Cheney's assassination squads, here.)

Who's next? Let's do it.

On Profiteering by Graham Parsons, NYC

2009-04-07T09:26:00.010-04:00

Meet a profiteer. Stanford L. Kurland was president of the now infamous Countrywide Financial Corporation until late 2006. During his tenure, Countrywide became a principal player in the residential lending spree that precipitated the present economic crisis. Although he has so far avoided official censure, Mr. Kurland, according to charges filed by the New York State comptroller, is responsible for misleading investors about the financial state of his company. Countrywide itself has also been the defendant in a number of lawsuits that charge it with misleading borrowers. When Mr. Kurland left Countrywide (not long before it became a basketcase) he cashed in nearly $200 million in the company’s stock.

Now, Kurland has emerged with a new company. PennyMac, or the Private National Mortgage Acceptance Company makes its money by buying delinquent mortgages from distressed banks or the FDIC for pennies on the dollar and then negotiating new mortgages with the homeowners or foreclosing. The same toxic assets that Countrywide helped put into the marketplace and that are now killing banks and, in turn, the world, are being bought up by PennyMac at cut rate prices. PennyMac buys the mortgages for such a low price that even drastically reducing what the homeowner owes leaves PennyMac with a substantial profit. The company anticipates earning annual profits of 20%.

So, a man who made millions as a leading contributor to the creation of the mess we’re in, has found a way to make more millions as a result of it.

I expect I’m not alone, but Mr. Kurland’s behavior strikes me as repugnant. Why? Because I think there is something inherently reprehensible about profiteering.

In general, profiteering is the attempt to make private profit in circumstances of widespread distress. When there is a crisis, a profiteer is someone who tries to use the circumstance to his own private monetary advantage.

The notion of war profiteering is familiar. War profiteers make money by selling arms, raw materials like oil or steel, or even food rations to distressed communities at war. But profiteers are those who take advantage of any crisis, whether they are famines, hurricanes, tsunamis, or political economic collapses. Price gauging is a good example. In today’s economic meltdown, profiteering appears to be widespread. In my neighborhood, signs have appeared on telephone poles that scream “Avoid Foreclosure. We Pay $$$ for Homes.”

Raising doubts about profiteering makes any capitalist a bit uneasy. This is because it involves doubts about the justifiability of entrepreneurial activity in certain circumstances. In essence, profiteering is acting like a good entrepreneur in times of crisis. When there are profound social distruptions a profiteer asks, “How can I profit from this?” not, “What can I do to help?” A profiteer is a capitalist, a capitalist responding to crisis. If profiteering is wrong, then there are times that capitalism is wrong.

So, what’s wrong with profiteering? Of course, a defender of profiteering will likely say, “Nothing.” They will give one of two reasons for this. First, they will say that profiteering doesn’t hurt, but helps. Kurland, though acting selfishly, is nevertheless allowing people a chance to keep their homes, something that they wouldn’t be allowed to do otherwise. The same goes for all profiteers.

The problem with this claim though is that surely profiteering isn’t always beneficial. A person that sells food at an exorbitant rate during a famine isn’t benefiting those who are hungry. Similarly, when PennyMac forecloses on a home because it believes the home is worth more on the market than the homeowner can pay, they don’t seem to be helping that homeowner. Moreover, there are surely more effective ways of keeping people in their homes than PennyMac’s profiteering way.

Second, a defender of profiteering will argue that people don’t owe one another anything (unless they have individually made a promise to provide it). People don’t have rights to goods or services. They only have rights to not be treated in certain ways. Profiteering, therefore, is permissible. We have no obligation to help others who are struggling. If you want to make money off crises, you are welcome to.

The problem with this though is that it is completely false. People have rights to the goods and services that are necessary for a flourishing life. At a minimum, food, water, and shelter are such goods. People cannot be assumed to be able to provide these things for themselves. Especially in the sort of crises in which profiteering occurs, access to these things is not always forthcoming. Therefore, in as much as profiteering places strict barriers on the availability of goods people have rights to, it is wrong. Kurland can be faulted for violating the rights of people.

Typically, these so-called positive rights (rights to specific goods and services) are defended by appealing to an abstract notion of personhood. People, on this view, are conceived as autonomous beings with no relevant connection a particular history, community or body. As such, these unencumbered persons have the same set of rights and all others will be equally obliged to serve and protect them. The particular differences between people and communities are thus irrelevant.

I do not wish to diminish the rhetorical force of this point of view, but I do think it has many problems. In this case I think it misses an important feature of the problem with profiteering.

People are not abstract things. People are encumbered by history, community and their bodies. These facts about us are not morally irrelevant. Rather, they give us the material with which we constitute the moral point of view. Without them, we cannot find meaningful moral guidance.

The fact that we are all essentially situated in a particular historical and social project means that that social project and the individuals who constitute it must have intrinsic value to us. Being the social creatures we are means that we are committed to certain social projects and their continuation. We are to care for the particular communities we are a part of. They are not just things that are useful for our own private ends.

This explains what’s wrong with profiteering. Profiteers violate their obligation to care for their particular communities and their members when these are in peril. Crises, whether they are wars, natural disasters, or economic calamities, trigger the obligation of those in particular communities to come together and work collectively to protect one another. Crises call for heightened solidarity. The profiteer’s failure is a failure to recognize his obligation to his group. In this way, profiteers are like the traitor in war who abdicates his obligation to fight the enemy of his people. The profiteer too is a traitor; he is disloyal to his community.

Full IC Red Cross report

2009-04-07T00:57:00.005-04:00

Now leaked in full at the New York Review of Books. Go here.

For Mark Danner's companion article, 'The Red Cross Torture Report: What it Means', go here.

Danner's article is worth reading, so don't miss it.

It's hard to see how this document will not have significant political ramifications. Hopefully, all the investigations that have been shelved and put into abeyance will be fast tracked.

As Danner points out in his article, the contours of the Bush administration's torture program have been known since 2004. What more needs to be revealed before action is taken?

Obama continues to assert that he wants to move forward. Moving forward is appropriate under certain circumstances, but in this case it is unequivocally the wrong path. This is not only because the current administration has no standing to 'forgive' and forget (only the victims have that authority), it is evident that the issue won't just pass away. Not only are many Americans rightfully vociferous on this issue, it has a determined international following. Even if America should allow its politicians to continually obfuscate, the rest of the world will not. Specifically Spain, the UK and Poland are now undertaking investigations.

In this case, the only way forward is to look backward and come to grips with what we have done and what it means for us. To do that, we need a full accounting.

Ward Churchill's Victory

2009-04-02T21:53:00.013-04:00

After more than two years of trial, the University of Colorado was found guilty of wrongful termination in the case versus Ward Churchill. Though claiming academic integrity reasons, it is by all lights clear that the University of Colorado dismissed Churchill due to an article he wrote in 2005 about the terrorist attacks of 2001. In that article, Churchill suggested the view that the terrorist attacks were not simply a case of targeting innocent civilians but that they were strategically aimed at the financial structure of the military machine of the US. Let me say a few comments about this decision.

1) It is unacceptable that the New York Times is so shamelessly biassed on the issue. When the reputation of the powerful is at stake the New York Times walks on eggshells despite all evidence against them ("Scooter" Libby got a lot more deference from the New York Times). But when the reputation of an unpopular, marginal and powerless professor is at stake the New York Times comes out of the house, bat in hand, to beat up on him and please its enraged readers. Thanks again New York Times for courageously defending the truth...

2) The issue is not a dispute between freedom of speech and academic integrity, as the New York Times says. It is entirely about academic freedom. Churchill advanced a view that may not be true but which is perfectly conceivable. As such, it should be judged dispassionately aside from nationalistic sentiments. If found lacking, one should not be offended by its falsity. Plus, it presents the terrible events of 9/11 in a different light which arguably provides insight into the psychological motivations of Islamic terrorists--whether or not their motivations are justifiable. Furthermore, having no apparent Arab roots or connections with Al Qaeda, it is hard to explain Churchill's article as a conspiracy to destabilize the US. It seems to be the spontaneous work of a fellow who has a particularly critical view of his own country.

3) Finally, it is conspicuous that the jury was so intent on giving Churchill no economic reparation for the years he has been unemployed. Unable to award him no money while finding the University of Colorado guilty, they granted him a symbolic $1. They went as far as to ask the judge if they could grant such a ludicrous amount with the opposition of only one member and, when answered negatively, if they could simply replace that member. Pending further clarification, it gives the unfortunate impression that the jury was trying to apply the law reluctantly.

the Red Cross's conclusions

2009-03-30T20:18:00.003-04:00

The allegations of ill-treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill-treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

As quoted by Mark Danner in his great New York Review of Books piece, US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites (which contains numerous excerpts from the secret Red Cross report).

Structured finance for beginners

2009-03-30T18:22:00.003-04:00

Like many of you, I could care less about finance and the activities of Wall St. However, you can't swing a cat these days without hitting an article using the acronym 'CDO' and the terms 'credit default swap', 'tranches', 'AAA-rating', etc....Thus, a finance for dummies (i.e. me) would be helpful. Lo and behold, someone wrote one I found helpful.

Incidentally, that blog, BaselineScenario is generally instructive. One of its main contributors, Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the IMF (sigh), has been getting a lot of attention for his article, The Quiet Coup, claiming that the oligarchs have a stranglehold on American political life. Not news but, coming from an IMF dude who should know a thing or two about oligarchy, pretty significant. The IMF, backed by the US, has a brutal history of 'persuading' governments to change their economic ways. The same kind of medicine is merited in our current crisis, but it is no surprise that the US refuses to handle our case as we've been insisting other governments handle theirs.

Or at least that's Johnson's claim. The other theory is that the cases are the same: they both share the idea that some nation's wealth is looted and redistributed to the richest citizens in the world, wherever they may reside. The case that this is happening in the US is pretty strong; and we are all familiar with the IMF's history in developing countries.

Change you can believe in

2009-03-30T17:24:00.004-04:00

From the blog, The Lift:

A group of 4 lawyers which are part of the ‘Association for the Dignity of Prisoners’ (Asociacion pro dignidad de los presos y presas de espana) Boyé Gonzalo, Isabel Elbal, Luis Velasco and Antonio Segura), filed a criminal complaint against Jay Bybee, Douglas Feith, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, John Yoo and William J.Haynes II on the 17th of March at Spain’s Audienca nacionial for committing crimes under Chapter III of Title XXIV of the Spanish Criminal Code (”Crimes against protected persons and property during an armed conflict”). The lawsuit claimed the six former aides.

“participated actively and decisively in the creation, approval and execution of a judicial framework that allowed for the deprivation of fundamental rights of a large number of prisoners, the implementation of new interrogation techniques including torture, the legal cover for the treatment of those prisoners, the protection of the people who participated in illegal tortures and, above all, the establishment of impunity for all the government workers, military personnel, doctors and others who participated in the detention centre at Guantánamo”.
The case was not formally accepted by the court yet, but Baltasar Garzon has ordered the prosecution to start a criminal probe against the six. Gonzalo Boyé, one of the four lawyers who wrote the lawsuit, said the prosecutor would have little choice under Spanish law but to approve the prosecution.

“The only route of escape the prosecutor might have is to ask whether there is ongoing process in the US against these people,” Boyé told the Observer. “This case will go ahead. It will be against the law not to go ahead.” Boyé predicted that Garzón would issue subpoenas in the next two weeks, summoning the six former officials to present evidence.

If Garzón decided to go further and issued arrest warrants against the six, it would mean they would risk detention and extradition if they travelled to Spain or any of the 24 nations that participate in the European extraditions convention (it would have to follow a more formal extradition process in other countries beyond the 24).. It would also present President Barack Obama with a serious dilemma. He would have either to open proceedings against the accused or tackle an extradition request from Spain.
Philippe Sands, whose book Torture Team first made the case against the Bush lawyers and which Boyé said was instrumental in formulating the Spanish case, said yesterday:

“What this does is force the Obama administration to come to terms with the fact that torture has happened and to decide, sooner rather than later, whether it is going to criminally investigate. If it decides not to investigate, then inevitably the Garzón investigation, and no doubt many others, will be given the green light.”

Signatories to CAT [Convention Against Torture--mtn] have the authority to investigate torture cases, especially when their own nationals have been involved. The current criminal case evolved out of an investigation into allegations, sustained by Spain’s Supreme Court, that Spanish citizens had been tortured in Guantánamo.

Read the rest here.

More discussion at Opinio Juris.

If America doesn't pursue investigation into its own crimes--and shame on the Obama administration for not taking the lead on this--then thank God someone else will.

For good measure, take a look at Scott Horton's interview with Jane Mayer. Her book, The Dark Side, claims that the Red Cross concluded that the CIA's 'interrogation regime' is torturous. The torture part may not be news, but the declaration by a major international institution is.

A Culture of Injustice by Matias Bulnes, NYC

2009-03-24T00:24:00.027-04:00

The prevalent principle in politics nowadays is that letting the financial sector fail is, all things considered, the worst scenario for everybody, including the worst off. This was the principle president Obama availed himself of in his speech to congress when announcing he was going to bailout Wall Street in spite of his own fury. If in the sinking of a ship you want to save children and women first because they are the most vulnerable, in the sinking of the country the principle prescribes the exact opposite: let the strongest (same ones who caused the ship to sink) take the emergency boats; the rest of us can swim and hope they’ll manage to come back to rescue us.

The case of AIG executive bonuses is a particular application of the principle. While most of the country is drowning, we find ourselves having to stretch our air supply even more so AIG executives (same ones who caused us to be drowning) can have enough peace and piña coladas in Cancun to figure out how to get us afloat. It turns out, according to the principle, that unless we collect our last pennies and give them away to the same gang that drove us bankrupt, they might decide to move to other industries leaving us helpless.

It is almost impossible not to find the principle funny. If only because it implies incentives that go beyond perverse: “twisted” seems a better word for them. In the hypothetical case that saving Wall Street first will in turn get the country afloat, it will be in the best interest of Wall Street executives to be as ruthless as they have been in making money next time round. The principle guarantees their capacity to extort the country if things don’t go well again. “We take the risk, they take the losses” could well be their motto.

Still, the principle might turn out to be true. Pundits seem to be pretty sure it’s true, including pundit in chief, Ben Bernanke, who is said to be an authority on the subject. For him or president Obama to even contemplate presenting a principle like this to the public he needs to pair it up with a promise of reform guaranteeing that the conditions that allowed the financial sector to drive us down will not repeat. Only this can placate the perversity of the incentives thus engendered.

On pain of exposing my ignorance I shall not challenge the pundits. Instead I want to ask a question that grants their backward principle: Is it possible that our social organization is set up to safeguard the interest of an elite? If the principle is true, could it be true in virtue of a type of social organization whose ultimate goal is to protect a few?

The hypothesis suggested is admittedly speculative but, if true, it would depict our society in a guise bleaker than commonly assumed. It would entail not that social injustice is an unfortunate byproduct of Capitalism but that the collective well-being is a fortunate byproduct of the American brand of Capitalism. In simpler words, if correct, this would imply that the system allows for the collective well-being to increase only insofar as it does not interfere with the well-being of the elite. This would reverse the order of priorities usually thought to represent our social organization.

In fact, this order of priorities is invariably assumed in political rhetoric as well as academic debate. Our standard, if somewhat chauvinistic, historical account says that the modern democratic society is the result of centuries of social struggle leading to the vindication of the powerless masses. We all tacitly take pride in living in the age of reason when finally humanity has arrived at a social organization whose ultimate goal is the collective well-being and where the enrichment of a few is only accepted when conducive to this goal. We are heirs of the French Revolution—we like to believe.

By questioning this historical account, however, I do not intend to suggest that the economic elites somehow conspired to cheat us all into believing that the system works for us while it really works for them. On the contrary, I take the hypothesis to be compatible with this system being more or less inevitable: the spontaneous result of the flaws of alternative systems. In sum, it is possible, if perhaps implausible, that the system has been tweaked to protect the elite in a corruption-free manner.

Evidence for the hypothesis that our social organization is set up to safeguard the economic elite can be found in diverse considerations. If indeed the principle that the future well-being of the country depends on the well-being of the financial sector is true, as most experts believe, it will seem to entail the impossibility of pursuing the interest of the country without at the same time pursuing the interest of the “big banks.” This would appear to be prima facie evidence for the hypothesis.

Moreover, the fact that it is only the “big banks” that need to be protected at any cost adds support to the hypothesis. If it were Wall Street as a whole that needed to be protected to salvage the economy one could argue that there is enough flow of people to and from Wall Street to represent a stable elite. But while this line of argument seems empirically dubious when predicated of Wall Street as a whole, it would seem plainly false when predicated of the “big banks.” The admission barriers for this elite seem insurmountable by the regular citizen regardless of her talents: e.g. having family connections, having attended Harvard Business School, having a certain golf handicap, etc.

Another obstacle my hypothesis needs to hurdle is the steep taxation rates of modern democracies. The redistribution of wealth resulting from such taxation rates seems to support the view that it is the collective well-being that has priority over the well-being of the economic elite in the inner workings of our social organization. While this argument may well carry some weight applied to countries with moderate inequalities (e.g. Sweden, Finland, Denmark, etc.) it seems entirely insufficient applied to the US. Not only does the US exhibit record inequalities but also its social mobility (i.e. the likelihood of moving up or down in the social structure) is remarkably low. In fact, the social mobility within the higher classes of American society is even lower than within middle and lower classes. This, on the contrary, further supports the hypothesis.

I realize that the evidence presented in this article may not suffice to prove the hypothesis under consideration. Still, I believe it is important to countenance such a bleak possibility in the light of the allegedly necessary injustices the country has reluctantly funded. What does seem clear from the discussion, however, is the demise of the American Dream: the US resembles less a land of opportunities than a land of well-paid servants. Perhaps we fail to see this in times of economic prosperity because we are absorbed in a culture of injustice.

Climate disruptions by Ornaith O'Dowd, NYC

2009-03-17T19:22:00.006-04:00

If you've blinked in the last several days, you will have missed media coverage of the Climate Change Congress, which took place on March 10-12 in Copenhagen. Climate scientists gathered there to assess the latest evidence of climate change. The message that emerged from the Congress was stark: we are facing (at least) the IPCC's worst case scenario. Climate disruption is worse than we had feared, even in 2007, and that was bad enough. Unsurprisingly, this has garnered far less attention than the economic crisis. The right insists that neoliberalism be shored up, restoring business as usual as possible. The Keynesian center (or center-left, depending on where one is standing) argues for massive public investment to create jobs and boost consumer spending. Contemporary Keynesians acknowledge the climate crisis and advocate a "green stimulus," with investment focusing on public transport and clean energy. As far as it goes, this makes sense, but it does not go far enough to begin addressing the problem on an appropriate scale. (The severity of the problem warrants significant reductions in energy consumption, all told, as well.) I want to discuss an aspect of the issue that usually goes unmentioned in the mainstream, but is essential to an adequate response: global justice and the long history of exploitation by the global North of the global South.
China recently became the world's largest emitter of carbon; other "developing" countries are following suit as industrialization and car use increase. Clearly, these countries cannot continue on this path if we are to tackle climate disruption. However, they are understandably piqued that "developed" countries grew rich precisely by expanding polluting industry and car use-- but without any restrictions or penalty.
Moreover, as a recent editorial in the UK Guardian points out, much of the carbon emanating from "developing" countries comes from the manufacture of goods destined for consumption in "developed" countries like the United States, often by foreign corporations (or their subcontractors). As is well known, U.S. (and other) corporations have chased lax environmental and labor regulations, as well as cheap labor, around the globe to maximize their profit margins. All the more galling, then, that the global North should deliver lectures to the rest of the world about carbon emissions.
All of this should be viewed in historical context: most importantly, the seamless narrative of the global North's economic exploitation of the global South, from the classical colonial period to the present. The global North exploits the South's resources-- labor, forests, diamonds, oil, rubber, coffee, and on-- and reaps the benefits (profits and cheap raw materials and goods), leaving the South to bear the burdens (depleted resources, impoverishment of workers, debt, and pollution). The narrative is seamless because there has never been any recompense or reparation for the resource theft (among other things) perpetrated by colonial powers: in fact, the theft has continued, albeit under a veneer of legitimacy. Because there has been no recompense, the global South, especially thepostcolonial global South, has been left with few options: develop on the North's terms, or not at all. (Latin America's leftward shift may seem to offer another story, one in which countries can develop on their own terms, but defiance of the North, especially the U.S., has always been punished. On the other hand, there is an ever-growing group of left-leaning governments in the region, and they represent an increasingly formidable force politically.)
There are many interesting issues surrounding reparations (most often discussed with respect to slavery in the United States). To enumerate them all would require a post by itself; here, I wish to stress the point that the colonizers have not paid at all for their crimes; in fact, colonial powers have benefited, and continue to benefit, from them. (So the justification is not merely backward-looking, but tied to the present effects of colonialism.) Try to imagine an alternative history of Britain, for example, if it had not had an empire. In short, no industrial revolution. Without an industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries, what would Britain's economic position be today? Hard to tell, of course, but we can hazard a guess that it would not be in the G8. Now try to imagine the difference between the two "possibleBritains ": this is, very roughly speaking, the magnitude of what the global North owes the global South. (I am not necessarily suggesting this as a method for calculating reparations due, but as an aid to the imagination.)
So, the global North-- especially the colonial powers and slave trading powers-- owes the global South a lot of wealth and resources. An industrial revolution's worth, one might say. But the planet cannot afford any more industrial revolutions of the kind experienced in the global North: too much harm has already been done. The global North owes the global South the means for sustainable development (whatever that means-- the very language of development and growth are at least suspect from an ecological point of view). What's more, the global North bears the responsibility for the environmental damage caused by its own industrialization. Remember, too, that climate disruption will have (indeed, is already having) a disproportionately severe effect on the global South: tsunamis, drought, and so on.
Paying these debts would undoubtedly overturn the existing hierarchy of global power, and that is not on anyone's "realistic" political agenda. I do not expect to see these sorts of ideas discussed at the Copenhagen summit later this year: anything stronger than the Kyoto agreement would probably be an achievement, diplomatically. However, the scale of the crisis demands something much closer to the former than the latter. I do not think it has ever been more important to talk about what ought to happen-- and what must happen, if catastrophe for billions of people is to be avoided-- even if it seems very unlikely.

Responsibility for viciousness

2009-03-11T13:01:00.005-04:00

In a recent article, ‘From Captive to Suicide Bomber’, the Washington Post implicitly raises the fascinating question: How much responsibility does the US bear for the violent actions of those released from Guantanamo? (For a related article, go here).

There are two conflicting positions on this question, each of which bears some truth, but neither of which is complete or satisfactory.

The subject of the Post piece is Abdallah Saleh al-Ajmi, a kid picked up in Pakistan in 2001 and then shipped to Guantanamo from which he was subsequently released—4 years later. In March 2008, he was responsible for a suicide bombing which killed 13 Iraqi soldiers and wounded 42 others.

The first kind of position will use the very fact of the suicide bombing as sufficient evidence that he was, all along, a vicious terrorist. Character is destiny, they argue, for no person of moral virtue can become someone who contemplates arbitrary killing (let alone carries it out). The crucial mistake was to have released such a person in the first place. Even if there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute Ajmi in a court of law, we now know, from the standpoint of ashes, that his incarceration was justified.

One can have some sympathy for this view, on the grounds that it is difficult to imagine the kind of transformation it would require to yield a vicious murderer from an innocent. The view holds that there was no transformation; the alleged innocent must have ‘had it in him’ all along. If so, the US is not culpable for what he became or for the actions that flowed from what he became.

The Post article, however, suggests a very different picture. In the initial stages of his incarceration, the boy was, by most accounts, respectful and hopeful. It was a consequence of, among other things, the humiliation, degradation and abuse suffered while at Guantanamo, that he morphed into the suicide bomber. On this picture, the US is responsible for either creating the man’s viciousness or, at the very least, bringing to fruition a viciousness that would have otherwise remained infant and unexpressed. Critics of US foreign policy often point to a vicarious version of this mechanism to support their claim that US action in Iraq is the greatest recruiting tool imaginable.

What can we make of this divide? Although we intuit that a traumatic experience can alter someone’s view of the world and, at the extreme, even ‘break’ him, it is nevertheless mysterious how character can be so extremely malleable. We use the word ‘break’ only as a stopgap in our understanding. For the hopeful kid picked up in Pakistan and the enraged man who bombed the Iraqi base are, for all the differences, identical--the memories are the same. Nevertheless, if not his identity something significant changed. But what, and more importantly, how?

I don’t know the answer to either question, but I can suggest a reason why the first view--that Ajmi had it in him all along--can seem so appealing. Our ethical understanding of alterations in character depends upon our ability to conceive it in ourselves. I can understand, for example, your remaining angry at the friend who betrayed you, because I can imagine how I would be in similar circumstances. However, when we reflect on our own character, it is (almost?) impossible for us to identify ourselves with, for example, the imagined driver of a truck loaded with explosives, who intends to kill as many people as possible, including himself. What could such a person be thinking and more importantly how can someone who used to find such thoughts unthinkable become one who not only thinks them but acts on those thoughts. There are pictures of despair, hopelessness and rage that fill out and help explain how someone could do such a thing, but seeing ourselves as we do, i.e. as ‘normal’, I am suggesting we cannot see from here how any such explanatory framework ever could apply to us. There is a large gap that cannot be filled by ethical imagination.

Of course, this doesn’t establish that Ajmi must have been vicious coming into Guantanamo. I don’t believe that. The evidence strongly suggests a transformation, and we can believe this because there is ample empirical evidence that such transformations can occur. To believe he transformed is partly to believe in the evidence of its possibility. This is different from being able to imaginatively project ourselves into his situation (a paradigm ethical move). From the evidential standpoint, we view the subject as an object that is completely subject to forces beyond his control. No longer an agent of his actions, he becomes a non-responsible kind of thing. If so, the US who created the conditions of duress which typically generate character change, should take some responsibility not only for what they did to him at Guantanamo, but additionally for the actions he committed after his release.

The adoption of the second picture requires that we take a clinical, and wholly objective, view of him. He, and his actions, were a product of forces beyond his control. This is a difficult view to sustain, for being human beings we cannot continue to see other human beings as mere objects who are the products of social forces. After all, Ajmi did not become an automaton. Even in his second incarnation, he had thoughts and he made decisions, ones for which we would typically hold him responsible. Once we view a human being as a product of forces beyond his control, it is difficult to know where to stop. Sure, the US contributed to making him who he became, but so did his parents and his community. Moreover, for those who were either victims of the suicide bombing or else knew them, we are hit with the truth that resentment needs a local target. Of course, it is possible, and I believe appropriate, to direct such anger at the US, but is it possible or appropriate to leave it at that? If the victims' loved ones continue to resent Ajmi, can we say that they are simply mistaken?

The tension between these two views does not mean we cannot adopt both of them. In fact, excepting those with an agenda or who are personally connected, moral ambivalence attends familiarity with these kinds of cases. Ajmi became vicious and intended to kill, and for that he is subject to blame; however, when we learn of the horrific circumstances which nurtured and conceivably gave birth to his viciousness, we (want to?) believe that blaming him is inappropriate. Neither is wholly satisfactory, but neither are completely unfounded either.

Obama's Choice of Reason

2009-03-10T19:02:00.006-04:00

We cheerfully welcome President Obama’s decision to end Bush’s funding barriers to stem cell research. Even more important is Obama’s pledge that during his administration public policy will be decided on the basis of scientific evidence as opposed to religion or ideology. This is extremely important not only because it makes it more likely that science will be able to find cures for various degenerative deceases but because it restores the rule of reason inside the White House. For too long, the US had been submerged in times of obscurantism reminiscent of the Middle Age. This was absolutely unacceptable for a modern, secular democracy and worrisome as a sign of decline. Fortunately for the US and the world as a whole, religious dogma will no longer hobble the prospects of a better life for many.

The Pretense of Knowledge by MT Nguyen, The Empire, CA

2009-03-08T22:02:00.009-04:00

The title comes from the Austrian economist, F.A. Hayek’s, Nobel Prize winning address. I like the title and the sentiment it expresses. Hayek applied it specifically to economists of his era, and I would like to apply it, although in a different context, to economists as well, including to Hayek himself.

For those who are not familiar with Hayek (I wasn’t until about a month ago), the one interesting thing to know is that he is something of a hero to the right wing. His attack on socialism, The Road to Serfdom, is a classic; his work on economics forms one cornerstone in what is known as the Austrian School (roughly, anti-Keynesian economic theory). In trying to learn something about the large clash of ideas that is occurring now because of our economic crisis, one could do far worse than spend some time studying his writings.

Much can be gleaned from what Hayek concludes in his Nobel address:

The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society - a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.

This should be understood as a call for skepticism, a wariness of human arrogance in matters of knowledge. In Hayek’s case, he applied this skepticism to economic knowledge, asserting that we cannot have the kind of knowledge that many economists claim. This epistemic hole implies, Hayek claims, that governmental economic market manipulation is (more or less) always unjustified. Grounding this skepticism is his assertion that the market-place possesses its own kind of ‘wisdom’. Specifically, markets can sum up the totality of human economic intentions and communicate them to all economic players in the form of prices. This is the coordinating function at which it is uniquely master. According to Hayek, the only way acquire the ‘wisdom’ of the marketplace would be to know the intentions of each individual market player, and since that is possible only for God, if such there be, it would be overreaching (to say the least) to insinuate oneself, as the government does, when it fixes prices, attempts to manipulate wages, prevents capital flight, or performs any number of other interventionist actions.

Many have used Hayek to draw the conclusion that government should never interfere with the marketplace. This is highly misleading. First, Hayek himself was quite clear that exceptions existed, e.g. when the costs of a business venture cannot be summed up by price (pollution is a classic example because a polluting business does not solely bear the costs of its pollution, but gains all the profit); and, when the enjoyment of a good cannot be efficiently charged to its recipient (e.g. signposts and roads). In such cases markets fail to do their job, and government has a role to play. Second, and rather surprisingly, he believed a strong case could be made that government should provide a safety net against catastrophic loss, i.e. a kind of insurance against shortfalls in basic material necessities. I take it some of his followers will take him to task for his alleged inconsistency on this matter. It is unclear to me how far he is willing to go, but it makes his position interesting and far from the dyed-in-the-wool anti-interventionist his followers want and paint him out to be. On both counts, therefore, he was not, as he repeatedly says, a proponent of laissez-faire economics.

Aside from the exceptions just noted, generally he thought that there was a positive role for government: it should be like a gardener tending to his garden, cultivating the conditions necessary for (economic) growth. Nevertheless, the exceptions and cultivating activities are, for Hayek, necessarily protracted and limited.

Leaving those not insignificant nuances aside, we can ask the question whether it follows from this type of economic theory that governmental intervention is generally wrong. On the face of it, it is easy to say no. Governmental intervention is wrong only if we make the striking conclusion, one which I have argued before there is no reason to accept, that a true economic theory implies economic justice. That is, that allowing true economic theory to dictate policy necessarily benefits everyone. This is a Platonic fantasy to which we shouldn’t be beholden.

When the mechanisms of the marketplace lead to unjust economic distributions, there is good reason why government should interfere. The reason is simple: government should be in the business of achieving justice. It is important to digest the truth that economists for all their pretensions of knowledge, all their mind-numbing econometric models, really, I mean really, have no special competence and hence no authority to say anything about how economic goods should be distributed.

I just said that governments are in the business of justice and concluded that economists are not and so should shut up (or at least make clear that when they are dispensing ethical advice, they don’t pass it off as grounded in some mathematical model or, worse, some a priori truth born out of reflection on the nature of rationality). But here’s the rub. Many of the most influential 20th-century economists from von Mises to Murray Rothbard, to Hayek, to Milton Friedman have philosophical pretensions. Look at the titles of their influential works and there can be no doubt: “Socialism” by von Mises, in which he purports to establish the irrationality and immorality of all forms of socialism; “For a New Liberty” by Murray Rothbard in which he purports to establish libertarianism as a philosophical doctrine; “The Road to Serfdom” by Hayek, as I said earlier an attack on socialism; “Capitalism and Freedom” by Milton Friedman, in which he defends the idea that economic freedom is a necessary condition of political freedom.

This whole cast of ‘liberal’ economists suffer a pretense to knowledge, namely, that they can make true claims about social justice. Turning again to Hayek, when he asserts that government interference may make it a ‘destroyer of civilization,’ he does not mean just a destroyer of economies. He means that governmental interference unjustly restricts individual liberty, and thus casts an inextricable totalitarian shadow over the whole of political life. In the end, Hayek proposed fairly moderate policies. This cannot be said of his heirs. This is why there now exists a more severe strand of conservatism (or libertarianism, nee classical liberalism) a la Grover Norquist which aims, in Norquist’s famous quip, to “drag [government] into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub”. On this radical view, the business of economics cannot be separated from that of justice; for government to intervene in economic transactions just is for it to destroy liberty and send us all on the short road to serfdom.

Whatever is to be said on either side of this debate, and much ink has been spilled, my point is to note the movement to an entirely different habitat than the one in which the academic economist lives. What we have here is an ethical/political theory, one which posits a conception of happiness and the necessary steps to achieve it. We are in the domain of philosophy in the grand Platonic/Nietzschean sense (as opposed to the narrow academic sense). To his credit, in the original preface to ‘The Road to Serfdom’ Hayek explicitly acknowledges that its content stands outside the ken of his specialty, academic economics. That however didn’t stop him from writing the rest of the book, nor did he repeat that qualification in the subsequent editions—after it had enjoyed its successes. These philosophical ambitions, perhaps, explain the longevity of their ideas, and why they persist even though the economic basis of the ideas have fallen out of favor.

In a recent interview, Paul Krugman quipped that no special license is required to identify oneself as an economist. This truth applies to an even greater extent to identifying oneself as a philosopher. Our 'liberal' economists, not content with the small deliverances of their own discipline, seem to want to ‘play the master’ (to use Nietzsche’s phrase) and fancy themselves philosophers. This is ironic since for all their railing against government planning out and directing individual lives, these people have taken on the ultimate synoptic perspective: that of the philosopher who knows the good for man and aims in their activities to make that vision real. Plato would be proud.

Hayek rightly chided economists for their ‘scientism’, that is, their pretending that economics can deliver knowledge on a par with physics. I think he should have chided them, and himself, additionally for pretending to have the wisdom of philosophers. Assuming such a wisdom exists, there is no special reason to think that economists have it, and thus no special reason to listen to them when they make philosophical claims. Of course, we need not deny that as individuals these economists can have philosophical insight; but, since there can be no sound inference from true economic theory to a sound ethical theory, any philosophical claims must be diligently distinguished and judged on their own merits. I intend on tackling some of their more interesting philosophical claims in my next essay.

the Human Rights regime and its difficulties

2009-03-05T14:22:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president. This is the first ever warrant for a sitting head of state. Among a whole host of other grim crimes (but curiouslynot genocide), he is charged with crimes against humanity. Hardly anyone, except perhaps President Bashir himself, thinks he’s innocent. But, little if anything will happen to him in the near or perhaps even distant future. In this regard, the warrant has little force. This expresses one difficulty of the human rights movement. While it clearly enjoys a kind of moral authority (in the sense that no sane person would deny the moral wrongness of, say, genocide) in most parts of the world, human rights documents have yet to enjoy the kind of legal authority which national constitutions enjoy. To be sure, as a UN member, Sudan is legally bound by the arrest warrant, and therefore has the legal obligation to arrest Bashir. However, that’s as likely as Bush endorsing a Truth Commission.

An effective human rights regime cannot be bootstrapped into existence, and without inter alia the internal acceptance of the relevant parties, the appearance of impartiality, and a mechanism for enforcement its more or less impotent motivational capacity will be once again reaffirmed.

I said ‘more or less impotent’ since the endorsement human rights do enjoy in most quarters does effect a not insignificant motivational force on the recalcitrant. Although Bashir rejects the authority of the ICC, he can come to believe in it if sufficiently ‘advised’ by his peers. Unfortunately, many African leaders are reluctant, for various reasons, to hold him to account: the specter of colonization and the strident nationalism it engenders is, rightly so, a very powerful political tool.

But there are other international supporters, e.g. China, that can bring to bear their significant persuasive powers. This is true even though China itself is far from a prime mover in the human rights movement. Moreover, there is some talk that Bashir’s generals are ready to throw him overboard, but that seems unlikely since they are likely implicated in his crimes. Motivating them would require assurances that they are not next on the warrant list. This is another difficulty of the human rights regime. Leaving aside the recalcitrant, its effectiveness depends upon reaching a threshold among all others: many, many nations, individuals, corporations, organizations, etc.., have to be on board before it can play even a limited normative role. The lesson however is that the creation of a human rights regime does not require only true believers; we need only some of those and some others who can come to have a reason to comply. In a sense that is encouraging, since it is easier to effect.

The human rights movement is still in its infancy, and so the gap between its aims and what it can effect can seem enormous. Nevertheless, knowing the difficulties it faces should make us place emphasis on persuading others of its great importance.

Freedom and "Big Government": A Primer by Graham Parsons, NYC

2009-03-02T16:04:00.006-05:00

One of the right’s most common criticisms of any center or left-of-center initiative is that it will mean “big government.” Among other things, “big government” is supposed to be an oppressive and paternalistic entity. “Big government” regulates economic relations and intervenes in other areas of social life, and, by doing so, stifles freedom rather than protects it. Anything less than limited government that preserves a completely laissez-faire socio-economic life is oppressive. In his much-discussed speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee this week, Rush Limbaugh made the claim quite clearly. He suggested that the Obama administration’s “mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation.”

The relation between freedom, government and capitalism is clearly an area where philosophers have much to contribute. Many other debates regarding economic policy ought to directly involve professional economists in some respect (although too often economists are simply seen as “experts” to be trusted on all aspects of economic policy). Will the stimulus package “jump start” the economy? Is the TARP the most cost-effective way to save the banking industry? These are questions we rightly look for advice from economists to answer. But the question, “Will Obama’s economic agenda make us unfree?” is not answerable by any economic calculus. This is clearly a philosophical question.

I want to (very briefly) review the some of the seminal turns in the centuries of literature on the issue of freedom and government in relation to laissez-faire capitalism. The Rush Limbaugh view is an old one and has been challenged in numerous ways. Of course, this review is simply a sketch of a few alternative positions, with many (or most) of the details and complications left out. I hope this primer will be useful to anyone advocating economic reform from the left.

First off, note the meaning of “freedom” the right is employing in the “big government=oppression” line. Freedom for them is an absence of interference by others. One is free if and only if one is unhindered by others. This view has its origins in early modern philosophy, especially in the social contract theories of Hobbes and Locke. If we take freedom to have this meaning, then, in as much as government tells us how and in what way we can form relations with others then, we are not free.

Now, it is certainly true that government can stifle freedom. No one would deny that. But there are at least two big problems with the “big government=oppression” pitch. One problem is that government is not the only thing that can interfere with us. Individuals and non-state groups can oppress us by limiting our opportunities to do what we want.

This point is supremely important when it comes to the issue of laissez-faire capitalism, for, as has been pointed out for over 150 years, capitalism leads to vast concentrations of power over the economy. These concentrations of ownership give inordinate power to a few over the fate of the many. Ultimately, under capitalism, what work there will be, how much it will pay, what will be produced, and how it will be distributed are all things that are determined by the decisions of a few oligopolists. In this way, there is a general narrowing of opportunities for most and a reduction of their ability to do what they want.

Also, the power these elites have over the economy gives them inordinate power over the state. The dependence of the bulk of society on those who control essential economic resources means that the state can easily be manipulated to serve the elite’s narrow interests. Rather than maintaining freedom from interference by others then, a laissez-faire capitalism ends up being a rather oppressive place where the few who control the economy, control how the rest live and how they are governed.

This brings us to the second problem for the “big government=oppression” line. Though governments can be oppressive, they all aren’t, even those that are “big.” Ironically, for those who care about freedom it is capitalism that necessitates the emergence of large, regulatory states that attempt to preserve some semblance of freedom. In order to offset the dominance of the few rich capitalists, the state needs to be interventionist. It needs to ensure the abilities of citizens to freely and equally live as they see fit. This requires lots of regulations and redistributions of wealth. Rather than being oppressive, in a capitalist society, a large, regulatory state is the only option for protecting freedom.

So, even if freedom is non-interference, “big government” can be a way to preserve freedom, not take it away. This reasoning lends itself readily to a defense of the welfare state.

But many have rejected the notion of freedom as non-interference altogether. Beginning with Rousseau and Kant, freedom is now often thought to be autonomy. Autonomy is more than just the absence of interference. Autonomy is a capacity for self-government. It is an ability a person has to determine her behavior according to standards she gives to herself.

What is distinctive about this view is that autonomy is not presumed to be a capacity that humans have innately. We are not born autonomous. Rather, autonomy is something that must be cultivated in us and enabled by certain social conditions.

For advocates of freedom as non-interference, there are no conditions for the possession of the capacity for freedom. Like any animal, we are free if we can seek to satisfy our desires without obstruction from other beings.

For advocates of freedom as autonomy however, simply removing external constraints on us is not sufficient to render us free. We need first to develop the capacity for freedom. Placing conditions on our capacity for freedom means that, if we think of freedom as a good, then in order to realize it, we need to create a social setting the develops it in people. Creating this setting can be done by an interventionist state.

Specifically, what needs to be established to realize freedom is a set of guaranteed social provisions. For most advocates of autonomy these provisions will include access to all levels of education, physical and mental health care, an investigative and broad-minded media, equal and competent legal representation, and transportation among other things. Only within a social setting with these goods guaranteed equally to all can individuals have their freedom realized. This reasoning lends itself readily to a defense of social democracy.

Once again, rather than taking away freedom, “big government” can be what ensures it.

Still, some advocates of freedom as autonomy have taken it to entail a rejection of capitalism altogether. If freedom is self-governance, all areas of social life ought to be controlled in a participatory, democratic way. This includes economic life. In order for people to have complete autonomy, they must be able to participate directly in all the decision-making that directly affects them. Each workplace and the way it relates to other workplaces, as well as how the overall economy functions and for what purpose, must be under the equal control of all those who compose the economy. A system that accomplishes this would be the fullest realization of freedom possible.

On this view, capitalism, even with a “big government,” is an unfree system. Only when democratic governance is applied to the economy itself, will freedom be achieved. This reasoning lends itself to a defense of socialist cooperativism.

There are many other conceptions of freedom to be considered. But this is just an outline of some of the ways one can deny “big government=oppression.”

Wall Street: Time for a Career Change

2009-03-01T22:03:00.006-05:00

NPR reported on this graph today. It shows the amount of household debt as a percent of GDP over the last century. Only two times has household debt been roughly equivalent to GDP--1929 and 2008. We all know what followed the peak in 1929. Can we expect a similar cataclysm now?

Well, quite possibly. The reason these jumps in debt can be thought to precipitate a severe downfall is that the debt is what has made the economy, with huge levels of inequality, run at all. With a huge pool of capital that needs to find a place to be invested at the disposal of the rich at the same time as the wealth of the average person has been relatively limited, the only way for the rich to find investment opportunities is for average people to be shouldered with massive debt. This growth in consumer debt was the only way to put off a crisis.

The debt is what allowed the financial sector of the economy to become so bloated. And since all this debt cannot now be repaid, it is why so many banks are insolvent.

As I've argued before, simply "rescuing" the banks is not what we should be focused on doing. Among other things, we need to radically restructure the sector so that it is more proportionate to the real economy. This means that a lot of banks and other investment firms need to be shuttered or dramatically downsized. Many people working in finance need to find jobs in other industries. Having a PhD in financial engineering is now, hopefully, worthless. Maybe these people should look for unionized jobs in manufacturing?

Yikes

2009-02-27T16:39:00.003-05:00

From the Financial Times:

In recent weeks, bankers at places such as JPMorgan Chase and Wachovia have been quietly sifting data trying to ascertain what has happened to those swathes of troubled CDO of ABS [collateralised debt obligations of asset-backed securities].

The conclusions are stunning. From late 2005 to the middle of 2007, around $450bn of CDO of ABS were issued, of which about one third were created from risky mortgage-backed bonds (known as mezzanine CDO of ABS) and much of the rest from safer tranches (high grade CDO of ABS.)

Out of that pile, around $305bn of the CDOs are now in a formal state of default, with the CDOs underwritten by Merrill Lynch accounting for the biggest pile of defaulted assets, followed by UBS and Citi.

The real shocker, though, is what has happened after those defaults. JPMorgan estimates that $102bn of CDOs has already been liquidated. The average recovery rate for super-senior tranches of debt – or the stuff that was supposed to be so ultra safe that it always carried a triple A tag – has been 32 per cent for the high grade CDOs. With mezzanine CDO’s, though, recovery rates on those AAA assets have been a mere 5 per cent.

The truth really, really hurts.

A Very Partisan Stimulus Bill by Matias Bulnes, NYC

2009-02-24T19:49:00.009-05:00

The exhausting negotiation over the Stimulus Plan in Congress made one thing clear: Obama didn’t get his honey moon with Congress. In his first big initiative, less than a month after he arrived in the White House, Republicans decided to play tug of war with the Democratic majority in Congress. The Bill still passed but the resistance it found is striking in the light of Obama’s call for bipartisanship in Washington. Did Republicans not buy his call? Or did Obama abuse his credit line with such a “liberal” plan? Or, perhaps, there has never been such a thing as bipartisanship and Obama’s call for it (as McCain’s boast of his bipartisan record) was yet another political move to get an edge in the game.

Before attempting to decide among these possibilities let’s get clear as to what bipartisanship is. We say that a legislative motion is bipartisan simply when it is meant to appeal to both Democrats and Republicans. But if we are to factor in the usual implications of the word in political rhetoric, it also involves the assumption that bipartisan are those who put the interest of the country first, over and above the interest of their parties. To a large measure, the word has become etiquette to set apart the open-minded, transparent politicians from the narrow, egoistic ones.

Notice that being bipartisan is a matter of having the right intentions, not of actually voting with or against ones’ party (though the voting record is probably telling). Someone can frequently walk across the aisle to bridge gaps between opposing parties but do so in order to pursue a longer-term partisan goal--or even one of his own (e.g. becoming president). In the light of this the question whether politicians are ever bipartisan, that is, if bipartisanship is at all possible, is pertinent.

A political realist would give a negative answer to this question. According to political realism, politics is just a struggle for power and, as such, there is no room in it for higher ideals such as the country, world, the people, etc. (though the interest of the country is expected to follow from such egoistic wrestles). But many find political realism unnecessarily bleak or, in any case, implausible. Should they believe in the “bipartisan” talk?

During his campaign, Obama stressed the need to change the culture of attributing impure intentions to political opponents. Consistent with Obama’s optimism, one could explain the Republican resistance to his Bill as due not to their partisanship but to a genuine disagreement over what the interest of the country is. After all, no doubt Republicans and Democrats roughly represent distinct political ideologies which differ over what the good is. While Democrats tend to see the interest of the country as involving social justice, Republicans tend to omit this item in their conception of the nation’s good.

But even so, it is hard to fully explain the hysteria Obama’s plan sparked among Republicans as a legitimate bipartisan disagreement. Republicans were at fault for at least misinterpreting the context in which the debate was taking place. Bipartisanship is putting the country’s interest even above one’s ideology: it requires the ability to recognize that the country is in a state of emergency, curb one’s ideological impulses, unite with the opponents and get the country afloat. Republicans clearly failed on this score. This perhaps explains the feeling of disgust toward them many of us have been experiencing.

Hyper-reality

2009-02-22T22:15:00.003-05:00

I'm currently reading a law article (via Balkinization) on the conceptual/legal history of money, and came across this staggering assertion: the top 25 hedge fund managers earned an average of $825 million in 2007.

The author calls this the hyper-reality of money--and it has consequences, notably hyper-inflation.

My mouth is still agape, as I cannot make heads or tails of this.

Philosopher schools Op-ed columnist

2009-02-20T18:38:00.003-05:00

Hilzoy (of Obsidian Wings) chides George Will for failing to carefully read or failing to read or failing to understand or deliberately misrepresenting scientific work he cites in his recent column on climate change.

She writes, "Where I come from, when someone writes something of the form: 'P is not evidence for Q, and here's why', it is dishonest to quote that person saying P and use that quote as evidence for Q. If one of my students did this, I would grade her down considerably, and would drag her into my office for an unpleasant talk about basic scholarly standards. If she misused quotes in this way repeatedly, I might flunk her."

I guess Will flunks. Too bad that doesn't mean he loses his influential perch, for as Brad DeLong makes clear, the Washington Post's Ombudsman would fail as well.

Sigh.

Schadenfreude

2009-02-19T13:58:00.003-05:00

(Cartoon via www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au)

Evidently, the Swiss banking giant UBS has acknowledged their role in a conspiracy to defraud the US by knowingly sheltering tax dollars. As part of their agreement with the US DOJ, UBS will, for the first time ever, hand over names of relevant clients. The number of clients involved is listed by the Financial Times at 250. I find it hard to believe that the number is not higher, e.g. The New York Times writes that the number of accounts being investigated is 19,000.

At any rate, I know I always feel better when rich tax-evaders can glimpse their comeuppance just around the corner.

Israel's Election

2009-02-18T18:08:00.006-05:00

While the stimulus plan has concentrated the US media's attention, little has been said about Israel’s election last Wednesday. The exact result of the election is still open as the two almost tied majorities have to negotiate their way to the prime ministry. But one thing emerged as clear: the Right struck a huge victory. This state of affairs tends to corroborate two theses discussed in a previous article. First, once the alarm of war has passed public attention shifts from the Israel-Palestine conflict rather quickly: unfortunately, public attention responds to bloodshed. Second, the extremists, currently prominent on both sides of the conflict, are not temporary distortions but have massive support. The latter thesis is perhaps the saddest one. For one thing, the Right’s decisive victory will no doubt make George Mitchell’s work in the region more difficult. But more importantly, this tends to corroborate (though fortunately does not confirm) that the conflict may well have no solution.

Missing the point by Ornaith O'Dowd, NYC.

2009-02-16T21:54:00.010-05:00

Irish private sector workers, scared they will be the next to the laid off, attack the modest job security and benefits of public sector workers; U.S. pundits debate a cap on executive pay; bombs rain down on remote Afghan villages in the name of security while the threat of economic catastrophe to global security is ignored; "green capitalism" is touted as scientists warn the toll of climate disruption will be worse than anyone feared: all exercises, in one way or another, in missing the point. What they have in common is a failure to recognize the present economic situation for what it is: a deep, systemic crisis of capitalism and indeed growth-based economics whose effects are and will be social, geopolitical, environmental, as well as strictly "economic." It is not just a crisis of neoliberalism, although it is surely that, too. This misdiagnosis is rather more than something for dismayed Marxist and other radical commentators to bemoan: it is more or less a guarantee that the recovery plans that are enacted will, in the best case scenario, merely set the scene for an even uglier day of reckoning in the future. Here's why.

The dramatic story of the economic collapse in Ireland is close to my own heart, since it is my home country. But it is an interesting case study for any observer, for at least two reasons. First, until very recently Ireland was the star pupil of neoliberalism and (capitalist) globalization, an economic miracle. Well, the Tiger's decline has vindicated those who are skeptical of miracles, for the obvious reason that the whole thing was built on a housing bubble. Second, what passes for public debate in Ireland is centered on the almost entirely unquestioned idea that the answer to the crisis is to protect banks at any cost (through guarantees and recapitalizations) and severely cut public spending-- medical care for seniors, HPV vaccines for teenage girls, resource teachers for special needs children, and, especially, wages and benefits for public sector workers. Amazingly, in the context of its response to the economic crisis, the U.S. looks like Sweden compared to Ireland.

Equally amazingly, the media and political elite have engineered a bizarre discourse of scapegoating public sector workers. Their sheer effrontery in having modest job security and benefits is cited as reason for private sector workers to demonize them, as though their "sharing the pain" will do any good whatsoever. The newspapers, television, and radio are full of this stuff. It serves the obvious purpose of diverting workers away from organizing together against the business and political elites, and it diverts attention from the real options available to deal with the country's economic crisis-- in particular, soaring unemployment rates. The tax take has plummeted; consumer spending has plummeted: it should be obvious that wage cuts and pension levies on public sector workers (as well as proposals to cut welfare) are hardly the answer. And yet, nobody except left-wing bloggers and union leaders is willing to state the obvious. The costs are likely to be enormous.

The debate occurring in many countries about the failure of the banking system is another case of missing the point. The public is encouraged to concentrate on executive pay: from Ireland to the U.S., much time and energy has been spent criticizing the pay and perks given to bankers. It is of course absurd and outrageous that these people should be paid millions of dollars or euros for running financial institutions into the ground. But that is just a sideshow. They know that it doesn't matter that they are rewarded for what seems to the rest of us to be abject failure: they know not only that they can hold governments to ransom by threatening financial Armageddon if their mess is not cleaned up for them, but also that the recovery efforts seem focused on enabling more of the same casino-banking in the future. In the U.S., the "post-crisis" future envisaged seems to be one of business-as-usual, with a smaller circle of banking behemoths creating more bubbles, with some cosmetic regulation to make everyone feel better. Beware any "solution" that restores hugely inflated house prices or, more generally, enables massive debt instead of income to fuel consumer spending-- for that is, in large part, what triggered this mess. (Beware, too, a solution merely focused on endlessly increasing consumption-- see below.) In short: executive pay is not the real issue. The long-term power that bankers have is.

Similarly, while Obama-style "green capitalism" is better than Bush-style wanton environmental destruction (talk about "generational theft"!), it is another sideshow. Capitalism requires constant growth-- growth upon growth. This is what drove colonial expansion, the consolidation of the United States, "globalization," and the consolidation of the E.U. More markets, more cheap labor, more raw materials. The trouble is, we humans simply consume too many of our planet's resources, and are busily unleashing destructive forces that, climate scientists warn, we keep on underestimating. So unless we figure out how to do economic growth without increasing resource consumption, our efforts at economic recovery will run into the brick wall of finite natural resources and increasingly severe environmental costs. There are some "green stimulus" measures that may help: building up mass transit and clean energy, for example. But the point will have to be to reduce resource consumption, all told (here, fossil fuel consumption). The reality is: fewer cars, fewer highways, fewer burgers, fewer toys, fewer tourist resorts, fewer kinds of shampoo.

Finally, as if there were not enough reasons to consider the war in Afghanistan utterly wrong, the idea that the U.S. should spend its time and resources bombing to shreds the residents of remote Afghan villages while the economic crisis stokes all sorts of global instability is shortsighted in the extreme. The International Labour Organization, a U.N. body, estimates that, if the situation continues to deteriorate, we could end the year with fifty million people unemployed worldwide. Although it is possible that this could result in mass workers' movements for economic and political democracy, it is unfortunately also possible that this could result in the nastiest reactionary forces gaining in strength. More widespread and more severe poverty is in itself the greatest global threat to human security. Wading deeper into yet another quagmire of a war is hardly going to help.

In general, even a standard Keynesian response to the economic crisis, although certainly better than a standard neoliberal one, will only do so much. If it is modest in scope, it will not do enough to help workers, will leave extant the global poverty and inequality that will threaten global human security, will allow for the development of the next crisis (through overproduction and profit squeeze or through another bubble or series of bubbles), and will not prevent environmental catastrophe. If it is ambitious in scope (merely reformist, but boldly reformist), it may ease, if not prevent, future bubbles, but will not prevent future crises (for profit margins will run into limits one way or another); it may help workers, but if investors retain effective "veto power" over policy, these measures will meet resistance, resulting in something like a repeat of neoliberalism's war on labor; it may or may not ameliorate global inequality; it probably will not prevent environmental catastrophe.

I think many commentaries have missed the point that the real debate is not between neoliberals and Keynesians, but between Keynesians and anti-capitalists: Marxists, eco-socialists, anarchists, socialist and eco- and anarcha-feminists. You heard it here.

Let me add that if you would like to find out more about the economic crisis in Ireland, Michael Taft's "Recession Diaries" at his Notes on the Front blog provides excellent, thorough analysis from a left perspective. For the establishment view, see The Irish Times.

Dear Republicans, Its not 1980

2009-02-14T08:40:00.006-05:00

Republicans continue to put forward outrageous arguments against the stimulus bill. Some of the worst accusations came from the floor of congress yesterday. Calling every policy 'socialist' that directly contributes to the well-being of Americans is simply an embarassment. On rare occasions, however, these people bother to try to reason their way to a rejection of the so-called stimulus package. But their arguments seem to apply to a fantasy world, a world where Keynesian economics has created a crisis and the solution is neoliberal deregulation. In other words, they think its (their version of) 1980 all over again.

Paul Ryan, Republican representative from Wisconsin, wrote an opinion in yesterday's New York Times that is very much worth reading. For Ryan, the problem with the stimulus bill is that it will create an enormous public debt, which will lead to inflation. This will be coupled with rising unemployment and we will be reliving the 1970's period of stagflation. He seems to assume that this is what always happens as a result of Keynesian economics.

So, according to Ryan, we shouldn't go down that route. What we should do instead is cut taxes for the rich and slash so-called entitlements spending. This will encourage private sector investment and, in turn, create prosperity for all.

As far as I can tell, this thinking is representative of the right-wing opposition to the stimulus. I don't know where to begin listing all the falsehoods and fallacies in this position so let me list the three that stand out.

First, suppose the fantasy world Ryan depicts is true. Suppose Keynes leads to stagflation and Reagan is the only answer. Nevertheless, his prescriptions for the economy don't follow. Right now, we are not combating stagflation. It is not 1980. Right now, we are trying to stop the next great depression. The economy is in a free fall and we are trying keep the ship afloat. Ryan seems completely oblivious to this. So he prescribes remedies that have nothing to do with the crisis we are in. Even if Keynes leads to stagflation, that is a problem I'd rather deal with down the road than a depression today.

Second, Ryan's assumption that Keynesianism leads to nothing good is ridiculous. Republicans are repeating this claim constantly. They say Keynes didn't get us out of the depression, didn't lead to widespread prosperity, didn't create the American middle class, etc. Can someone please substantiate this claim? Ask a Republican what did end the depression and she'll likely say it was WWII, not the New Deal. But it couldn't have been the war that ended the depression. It was the economic policies the country adopted during the war that did it. And what kind of policies were they? Keynesian. Most economists and historians (those not in love with Milton Friedman) have concluded that it was Keynesianism that ended the Great Depression and led to the most extended period of widespread prosperity in American history.

Third, the idea that Reaganomics is what will make us all well off is patently false. It might not be completely unreasonable to say that Reagan got stagflation under control. But Reagan also began the slow murder of the middle class. His neoliberalism has led to outrageous levels of inequality, oppression by the corporate elite, and, now, a severe recession and, possibly, depression. I can see little to say in favor of Ryan's economic prescriptions.

I'm afraid Republicans are simply terrified that Democrats will succeed. Note that after the Great Depression, Democrats dominated the American political scene for almost 50 years. Today, if Democrats are able to rehabilitate the welfare state and get people jobs, health care, an education, and a secure retirement, they stand to be ascendant for a long time to come. This, I think, is why Republicans are trying to thwart all their efforts.

This is gonna hurt

2009-02-10T20:40:00.007-05:00

(click on image to enlarge)

As you look at this, bear in mind that most economists are predicting the number of job losses to be dramatically larger in the current quarter than the last. I don't know about you but tax cuts don't look like the answer to me. The government needs to spend, spend, spend if we want to begin to put a stop to this.

Thanks to Dollars and Sense for posting this graph.

Geithner: Don't Scare the Monopolists

2009-02-10T16:04:00.004-05:00

The New York Times has a revealing story about the arguments within the administration over the nature of the rescue package for the banking industry announced today. As we can see, the package ended up being just an expansion of the Paulson-Bush plan to buy worthless mortgage-backed securities from the banks while leaving the industry itself unchanged. What's new about Geithner's plan is only its scale. It will devote far larger sums of money (somewhere around 1.5 to 3 trillion dollars) to the project and try to clean the bank's books more quickly. But, still, there will be no real attempt to restructure the industry. The administration is basically telling the bankers, "You have us in your pocket. We will do everything we can to save you. Don't worry about the consequences."

The Times story is interesting because it shows that Geitner fought against efforts by other administration officials to include some (rather meek) control over the banks that receive help. There was talk of putting restrictions on how the banks could spend the money they get from the government as well as Obama's much touted restrictions on executive pay. But Geithner successfully shot these proposals down, arguing that any attempt to assert control over the banks would scare private investors away. (Its hard to see how a private investor would be made more afraid of investing in a bank that has limits on how much its executives can be compensated.) Incidentally, it appears that no one in the administration considered the option of taking ownership control of the banks seriously.

What this episode is revealing is the power the banking industry has over the state. Either our elected officials are philosophically committed to protecting the banks or they are simply afraid to threaten the power of the banks. The fear is understandable. They who control the lifeblood of the economy can put up a mean fight.

I happen to be preparing to teach Adam Smith tomorrow and I came across this passage of his a few hours ago.

"[T]he monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained against us...[has] become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate[s] the legislature. The member of parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening this monopoly, is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose numbers and wealth render them of great importance. If he opposes them, on the contrary, and still more if he has authority enough to be able to thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank, nor the greatest public service can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real danger, arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists."

Unfortunately, the same could be said of the power of our banking monopolists today.

Zero Sum game

2009-02-10T15:24:00.002-05:00

Josh Marshall of TPM interviews economist Joseph Stiglitz about the current bailout plan. His take should, at once, frighten and madden.

Some highlights:

a. “To a large extent, this is a Zero sum game.” If someone wins, someone must lose. So, either banks win or taxpayers win.

b. In this high stakes environment, a bank’s losing, e.g. Citibank, would mean it is wiped out. Many banks’ balance sheets are so far in the red that current assets cannot possibly sustain the loss.

c. In response to whether bank failure(s) would lead to the often used word, ‘catastophe’, Stiglitz seemed quite sanguine over the matter. It isn’t a big deal. We need to keep in mind, he says, that a bank’s failure does not imply a destruction of any assets, but merely their reorganization. Moreover, there are benefits to allowing bank failure: we change the incentive structure so that long term, as opposed to short term, risk taking is incentivized. Failing CEO’s are fired, new one’s brought in, perhaps motivating private capital injections.

d. Lastly, we taxpayers now essentially own the major banks, given previous large capital injections. The problem is we don’t have, have not given ourselves, ownership control—and that is a disaster or will lead to one. Not for the banks, of course, but for tax payers.

Populist intuitions and general contempt for Wall St., at least in this scenario, seem to be verified. We intuitively understand that we are propping banks up at our own collective expense. And that ‘the shock doctrine’ is being deployed to great effect. Surely, those who have private interest in banks are doing whatever they can to ensure that they win this zero sum game.

It is a sorry state of affairs that Geithner’s and Obama’s plan seem to be facilitating that move. A move which was once referred to as ‘Cash for trash’ should now be called, as Stiglitz memorably puts it, ‘Cash for bundles of trash’. Since there’s no way of pricing this large and complex bundle, how much should we pay? Surely, it will end up being way, way too much.

Plato's return by MT Nguyen, The Empire CA

2009-02-09T04:30:00.011-05:00

Many who debate the merits of various stimulus proposals argue on the basis that their proposal rests on sound, that is true, economic principles. This is the basis for claiming that one proposal, as against any other, would work. Thus, conservatives cry out that the Obama proposal cannot work because it doesn’t contain enough tax cuts and includes too many irrelevant spending measures, while Democrats insist that Government spending on public works projects is key. Both policy proposals, tax cuts/decreased spending and ‘shock and awe’ Government spending, are firmly entrenched in each side’s economic principles, very crudely and respectively, free market principles which decry intervention and Keynesian principles which make room for it.

I will say nothing here on the merits of either claim (although this doesn’t mean that I believe that the proposals are on a par). Rather I want to note and focus on one thing that both sides share, namely, the assumption that what is economically true is also what is good for Americans. This may appear harmless and perhaps even a necessary truth. After all, shouldn’t economic policy be based on what’s true? Yes, it would be crazy to base social policy on what’s known or believed to be false. However, this is besides the point, because the assumption I want to note asserts much more than that truism. It is a striking assumption because it implies that the correct, i.e., true economic principles, are also, in the end, the just ones. For the efficacy of a proposal or the dimension along which a policy is judged to have ‘worked’ is always whether good has been achieved, at the limit, the good of economic justice. The assumption is comprised of two implications: if an economic principle is true, it must be good for the country; and, if an economic policy is good for the country, it must rest on true economic principles.

Here, the True and the Good (as I will say in shorthand) coincide in truly spectacular fashion. It should seem incredible to anyone who’s not Plato that this alignment should always take place.

Let’s be more concrete. When someone claims that any economic recovery would require that wealth be redistributed away from the wealthy and towards the working class, isn’t it curious that that person almost certainly believes, quite independently of economic principles, in some form of economic egalitarianism? Or, on the other side, when someone argues that government intervention into market forces makes for inefficient distributions, isn’t it curious that that person almost certainly believes that government intervention illegitimately transgresses a person’s right to property. An observant skeptic would suggest that these moral principles, egalitarianism and the sanctity of property rights, motivate and support the belief in certain economic principles. If so, it is no wonder then that the outcomes of the various policy proposals should yield (what’s believed to be) economic justice: moral outcomes are predetermined by moral inputs.

Now, it would certainly be objectionable to support an economic principle, a principle which purports to be scientific and objective, by reference to a moral belief. As a basis for supporting Say’s Law, “The all benevolent God told it’s true” is a howler. If economics purports to be anything like physics (or more likely, biology), human preferences cannot be a condition on the truth of its principles. Objective scientific principles shouldn’t be bent to the will of morality.

You might say, as I’ve read people say, that economics is not a science at all, but more like history, an attempt to reconstruct phenomenon after they’ve already occurred (this is more often claimed about macroeconomics than microeconomics). That is, a discipline with little if any predictive power. Whatever merits this claim has, it is certainly not the prevailing political opinion. This is evidenced by the fact that we turn to economists for expert advice. When we want to know, for example, what effects raising the Fed’s interest rate will have on demand for houses, economists are paid handsomely to give an answer. We certainly don’t knowingly turn to them for moral advice; if that were the case, moral philosophers would reap the windfall economists have enjoyed for years. Where do I sign up!

We might clarify things by thinking about one of the possible relationships between the two domains, the Good and True, as applied specifically to our subject, economics. One possibility is that the principles of economic efficiency are a non-moral matter, but they become objects of moral concern when we judge the appropriateness of various possible distributive outcomes. Given the importance of what is distributed by economic institutions, however, it becomes a moral question how such things should be distributed and hence, in the moral sense, what the correct distribution is. In this way, we can discover and support the correct principles of efficient distribution without recourse to any moral language; the latter shows up at a later stage.

This appears to be the philosopher, John Rawls’s, understanding of the relationship. He believed that morally neutral economic principles supported the possibility of distinct Pareto Optimal (roughly, maximally efficient) outcomes. A morally sustainable, i.e. just, distributive outcome would be chosen amongst those outcomesha. In this way, Rawls had his cake and ate it too. He demonstrated, he thought, that justice (the Good in our story) aligns with economic efficiency (the True in our story). On this picture morality is subsequent to and doesn’t seem to infuse economic theory in any objectionable way.

We might wonder though whether this is the same Platonic fantasy in a different guise. In particular, why should we believe that a just distribution so nicely coincides with one of the Pareto Optimal distributions? Rawls could only engineer this intersection by assuming that justice is compatible with, indeed requires, wide (possibly very, very wide) differences in wealth. Many have duly attacked him for this position, arguing (for example) that justice musn’t be held hostage by economic incentives that are allegedly born out of the differences in expected wealth. For our purposes, the problem is that Rawls went too far in the other direction: instead of grounding an economic principle on morality, he bent morality to the will of an economic principle.

In the end, the lesson is the following. If economics purports to be a scientific endeavor, then the application of its principles shouldn’t automatically be believed to be good for our country, even when true. Going the other way, if we are trying to assess the moral goodness of an economic policy (that is, its justice), we shouldn’t automatically conclude that there is some true economic theory which supports it. Either way, the important practical implication is that politicians who are responsible for making policy conform to justice shouldn’t rely solely on economic advice, even when the subject matter is economics and even if the advice is sound.

To believe otherwise is to believe that the True and the Good always intersect, and this is to believe in a notion that’s too good to be true.

Obama and rendition

2009-02-03T14:38:00.004-05:00

The LA Times kicked up a mini storm with the Sunday piece entitled, 'Obama preserves renditions…' According to the Times, Obama is set to continue Bush’s widely abhorred rendition program wherein foreign nationals are kidnapped and then taken to a torture-friendly country and subsequently tortured for information. As others have pointed out (here, for example), the Times piece fails to distinguish between extraordinary rendition and the type of rendition program the Obama executive order makes possible. This is no small difference, since the former is known to involve torture and other extralegal interrogation techniques while the latter, given the other executive orders Obama has penned, should not—at least for now. We need the qualification since Obama left open the possibility for using techniques that go beyond the Army Field Manual. This will depend upon the findings of the task force he called for to investigate the appropriateness of the manual’s methods. We eagerly await the results of this investigation.

The shortcomings of the Times piece needed to be pointed out, but we should be concerned that Obama's policies are getting a pass owing to the necessarily favorable comparisons to Bush's.

For example, we have this nugget quoted in the Times piece, “’Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place’ for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.” Now, what is a director of Human Rights Watch doing trying to justify kidnapping? It boggles the mind that someone committed to human rights could say that it could be morally justified.

Can we think of a greater affront to liberty than government sanctioned kidnapping? The Times goes on to quote Malinowski as urging Obama to set up a system to ensure that rendered prisoners be shuffled off to a court of justice where they would receive a public hearing. To be sure, this proposal offers an outcome better than being kidnapped and tortured. But with regard to the right to liberty, it is no less of an offense.

Even Glenn Greenwald, who I admire for his characteristic moral clarity, instead of condemning the practice of rendition outright, waxes philosophical by offering a thought experiment designed to tax the minds of those who would condemn the practice.

I believe Bush did the nation at least one service by clarifying what we should be against. As Nietzsche said, “We all need our antipodes.” We shouldn’t now lose our moral compass just because someone we trust and admire is in charge of the country. Perhaps we should be even more vigilant.

Beyond Stimulus by Graham Parsons, NYC

2009-02-02T15:04:00.009-05:00

I support the stimulus package that is currently before congress. Though I think it should devote a larger amount of money to public works projects, it is nevertheless a worthy piece of legislation. To put a stop to the downward spiral the economy is now in, the only hope is large-scale federal spending on production that creates well-paying jobs and puts hard cash into the pockets of workers. Despite what Republicans would have us believe, tax cuts alone are not the answer. You don’t improve the economy by giving a laid-off worker a tax cut. You improve the economy by giving her a new job, preferably one that pays better than her old one.

This is all Keynesian orthodoxy, and it is right. Kudos are due to Democrats and their (in some cases) conservative supporters for bringing back into the mainstream a political economic theory that had undeservedly been in the garbage bin for thirty years.

Still, it is not all that surprising to see widespread support for a sensible plan to stop an unfolding catastrophe. No matter how you originally thought the economy should function, once we hit an iceberg, we should be able to find at least general agreement on the way to save ourselves from drowning. The harder question, the one that will bring back the bitter battles between left, right and center, is what we should do assuming we manage to save ourselves. What have we learned from this crisis about how to maintain a stable economy and how do we put those lessons into practice?

Here’s the diagnosis of the crisis that I’ve offered in previous articles and one that I find is relatively mainstream. The crisis is not simply the result of greedy, short-sighted bankers who profligately lent money to people who couldn’t pay them back and then spun those loans into financial instruments that they managed to convince everyone were valuable (although these people surely were at the epicenter of the problem). Rather, the problem was systemic. The actions of the bankers were the inevitable result of a system that has an abundance of capital and a shortage of good investments. The bankers were just trying to manage this contradiction. That is not to absolve them of their moral failings, but it is to acknowledge the circumstances that drove them to do what they did. Even if we had morally upstanding bankers, the structural contradiction would remain and the surplus capital would have to squeeze into the market in one way or another.

Why did this contradiction occur? Again, the answer is systemic. In a capitalist system, especially a neoliberal one, control over productive assets accumulates into the hands of a few oligopolists. With control over the labor and commodity markets, these elites are able to push down worker compensation and benefits while pushing up worker productivity. In this way, a few are able to amass an ever-increasing amount of surplus wealth. All the while, the masses of working people are rendered increasingly destitute. And here is the contradiction. One the one hand, in order for the capitalists to be able to continually increase their surplus they need a continually expanding and prosperous consumer base to buy their goods and to provide markets for new investments. On the other hand, in order for the capitalists to be able to continually increase their surplus they need to continually reduce the spending power of workers (i.e. consumers). In other words, there inevitably results an abundance of capital and a shortage of good investments. This produces an unending cycle of increasingly severe investment bubbles and their attendant booms and busts. The system is inherently unstable.

The obvious way to avoid this problem again is to restructure the economy so that the benefits of production are more widely shared. We need a system that ensures that as the rich grow richer the rest of us do too. That way, the rich have safe places to invest their surplus and we can avoid more investment bubbles. So, why don’t we institute a regulatory regime, a strong social safety net, and a progressive tax code to make this happen?

That there is a problem with this solution is another consequence of the inequalities that produced the crisis. With their inordinate wealth, the rich have inordinate power. They are unwilling to allow the state and those it ostensibly represents to regain control over the economy. This is why much of the Republican proposals for rescuing the economy presume that the objective is to return the system to normal—normal being a system that enriches an elite and allows them to dominate society and politics. Moreover, even if we manage to implement some reforms, they will likely quickly be rescinded because the rich will still have the keys to the state. In this way, the problem with the economy also prevents us from implementing a real solution.

Ultimately, what we need is to radically shift power in this country away from the corporate elite and into the hands of working people so they can effectively protect themselves from the machinations of the rich. The only way I know of doing this is by organizing people. We need to reinvigorate and strengthen the labor movement so that the rich can no longer get away with murder. With a strong labor movement we can implement and protect economic reforms that ensure the fruits of production are widely shared and a there will be a strong social safety net. This is the first step to long-term economic recovery.

Notice below how the strength of labor corresponds with more egalitarian distributions of wealth. This is no accident.

(Graphs reprinted from Robert Reich’s Supercapitalism)

One major step toward strengthening workers would be the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The bill would make it significantly easier for workers to form a union. It would allow unions to form through what’s known as card check--workers informally indicate they favor forming a union in writing. This would enable unionization without waiting for a formal, National Labor Relations Board-observed election, a process that provides ample opportunity for management to intimidate workers into voting against unionization. With EFCA, workers can unionize immediately without the involvement of management. The bill would also put severe penalties on companies that discriminate against employees for their union activities and force employers to negotiate in good faith with a new union. These reforms have the potential to dramatically change the fortunes of the American labor movement.

But, as is to be expected, corporate America is using its full power to stop EFCA. The bill passed the House after Democrats took control of Congress in 2007. But the bill has stalled in the Senate and the business community has launched a full-scale assault on it (see here and here). As Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott says of the opposition to the bill, “We like driving the car, and we’re not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us.” The founder of Home Depot, Bernie Marcus, called EFCA, “the demise of civilization.”

Passing the EFCA will likely require an outpouring of support from the public, enough to scare Senators into going against their corporate patrons. Please write or call your Senators and urge them to support the bill. There is also an online petition for you to sign.

Foiling Another Palestinian “Peace Offensive” by Norman Finkelstein

2009-01-26T06:00:00.002-05:00

The following article is by the renowned commentator on Israeli-Palestinian-US relations, Norman Finkelstein. Here Finkelstein offers a narrative of the recent Israel attack on Gaza that runs radically counter to the standard one found in the opinion pages of American newspapers and on TV news. The article (as well as all things Finkelstein) can be found at www.normanfinkelstein.com.

Finkelstein is the author of numerous books including Image and Reality of The Israel-Palestine Conflict, a book that profoundly affected my understanding of the conflict.

Early speculation on the motive behind Israel’s slaughter in Gaza that began on 27 December 2008 and continued till 18 January 2009 centered on the upcoming elections in Israel. The jockeying for votes was no doubt a factor in this Sparta-like society consumed by “revenge and the thirst for blood,”[1] where killing Arabs is a sure crowd-pleaser. (Polls during the war showed that 80-90 percent of Israeli Jews supported it.)[2] But as Israeli journalist Gideon Levy pointed out on Democracy Now!, “Israel went through a very similar war…two-and-a-half years ago [in Lebanon], when there were no elections.”[3] When crucial state interests are at stake, Israeli ruling elites seldom launch major operations for narrowly electoral gains. It is true that Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s decision to bomb the Iraqi OSIRAK reactor in 1981 was an electoral ploy, but the strategic stakes in the strike on Iraq were puny; contrary to widespread belief, Saddam Hussein had not embarked on a nuclear weapons program prior to the bombing.[4] The fundamental motives behind the latest Israeli attack on Gaza lie elsewhere: (1) in the need to restore Israel’s “deterrence capacity,” and (2) in the threat posed by a new Palestinian “peace offensive.”

Israel’s “larger concern” in the current offensive, New York Times Middle East correspondent Ethan Bronner reported, quoting Israeli sources, was to “re-establish Israeli deterrence,” because “its enemies are less afraid of it than they once were, or should be.”[5] Preserving its deterrence capacity has always loomed large in Israeli strategic doctrine. Indeed, it was the main impetus behind Israel’s first-strike against Egypt in June 1967 that resulted in Israel’s occupation of Gaza (and the West Bank). To justify the onslaught on Gaza, Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote that “[m]any Israelis feel that the walls…are closing in…much as they felt in early June 1967.”[6] Ordinary Israelis no doubt felt threatened in June 1967, but—as Morris surely knows—the Israeli leadership experienced no such trepidation. After Israel threatened and laid plans to attack Syria, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser declared the Straits of Tiran closed to Israeli shipping, but Israel made almost no use of the Straits (apart from the passage of oil, of which Israel then had ample stocks) and, anyhow, Nasser did not in practice enforce the blockade, vessels passing freely through the Straits within days of his announcement. In addition, multiple U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that the Egyptians did not intend to attack Israel and that, in the improbable case that they did, alone or in concert with other Arab countries, Israel would—in President Lyndon Johnson’s words—“whip the hell out of them.” The head of the Mossad told senior American officials on 1 June 1967 that “there were no differences between the U.S. and the Israelis on the military intelligence picture or its interpretation.”[7] The predicament for Israel was rather the growing perception in the Arab world, spurred by Nasser’s radical nationalism and climaxing in his defiant gestures in May 1967, that it would no longer have to follow Israeli orders. Thus, Divisional Commander Ariel Sharon admonished those in the Israeli cabinet hesitant to launch a first-strike that Israel was losing its “deterrence capability…our main weapon—the fear of us.”[8] Israel unleashed the June 1967 war “to restore the credibility of Israeli deterrence” (Israeli strategic analyst Zeev Maoz).[9]

The expulsion of the Israeli occupying army by Hezbollah in May 2000 posed a major new challenge to Israel’s deterrence capacity. The fact that Israel suffered a humiliating defeat, one celebrated throughout the Arab world, made another war well-nigh inevitable. Israel almost immediately began planning for the next round, and in summer 2006 found a pretext when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers (several others were killed in the firefight) and demanded in exchange the release of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel. Although Israel unleashed the fury of its air force and geared up for a ground invasion, it suffered yet another ignominious defeat. A respected American military analyst despite being partial to Israel nonetheless concluded, “the IAF, the arm of the Israel military that had once destroyed whole air forces in a few days, not only proved unable to stop Hezbollah rocket strikes but even to do enough damage to prevent Hezbollah’s rapid recovery”; that “once ground forces did cross into Lebanon…, they failed to overtake Hezbollah strongholds, even those close to the border”; that “in terms of Israel’s objectives, the kidnapped Israeli soldiers were neither rescued nor released; Hezbollah’s rocket fire was never suppressed, not even its long-range fire…; and Israeli ground forces were badly shaken and bogged down by a well-equipped and capable foe”; and that “more troops and a massive ground invasion would indeed have produced a different outcome, but the notion that somehow that effort would have resulted in a more decisive victory over Hezbollah…has no basis in historical example or logic.” The juxtaposition of several figures further highlights the magnitude of the setback: Israel deployed 30,000 troops as against 2,000 regular Hezbollah fighters and 4,000 irregular Hezbollah and non-Hezbollah fighters; Israel delivered and fired 162,000 weapons whereas Hezbollah fired 5,000 weapons (4,000 rockets and projectiles at Israel and 1,000 antitank missiles inside Lebanon).[10] Moreover, “the vast majority of the fighters who defended villages such as Ayta ash Shab, Bint Jbeil, and Maroun al-Ras were not, in fact, regular Hezbollah fighters and in some cases were not even members of Hezbollah,” and “many of Hezbollah’s best and most skilled fighters never saw action, lying in wait along the Litani River with the expectation that the IDF assault would be much deeper and arrive much faster than it did.”[11] Yet another indication of Israel’s reversal of fortune was that, unlike any of its previous armed conflicts, in the final stages of the 2006 war it fought not in defiance of a U.N. ceasefire resolution but in the hope of a U.N. resolution to rescue it.

After the 2006 Lebanon war Israel was itching to take on Hezbollah again, but did not yet have a military option against it. In mid-2008 Israel desperately sought to conscript the U.S. for an attack on Iran, which would also decapitate Hezbollah, and thereby humble the main challengers to its regional hegemony. Israel and its quasi-official emissaries such as Benny Morris threatened that if the U.S. did not go along “then non-conventional weaponry will have to be used,” and “many innocent Iranians will die.”[12] To Israel’s chagrin and humiliation, the attack never materialized and Iran has gone its merry way, while the credibility of Israel’s capacity to terrorize slipped another notch. It was high time to find a defenseless target to annihilate. Enter Gaza, Israel’s favorite shooting gallery. Even there the feebly armed Islamic movement Hamas had defiantly resisted Israeli diktat, in June 2008 even compelling Israel to agree to a ceasefire.

During the 2006 Lebanon war Israel flattened the southern suburb of Beirut known as the Dahiya, where Hezbollah commanded much popular support. In the war’s aftermath Israeli military officers began referring to the “Dahiya strategy”: “We shall pulverize the 160 Shiite villages [in Lebanon] that have turned into Shiite army bases,” the IDF Northern Command Chief explained, “and we shall not show mercy when it comes to hitting the national infrastructure of a state that, in practice, is controlled by Hezbollah.” In the event of hostilities, a reserve Colonel at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies chimed in, Israel needs “to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate….Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes.” The new strategy was to be used against all of Israel’s regional adversaries who had waxed defiant—“the Palestinians in Gaza are all Khaled Mashaal, the Lebanese are all Nasrallah, and the Iranians are all Ahmadinejad”—but Gaza was the prime target for this blitzkrieg-cum-bloodbath strategy. “Too bad it did not take hold immediately after the ‘disengagement’ from Gaza and the first rocket barrages,” a respected Israeli columnist lamented. “Had we immediately adopted the Dahiya strategy, we would have likely spared ourselves much trouble.” After a Palestinian rocket attack, Israel’s Interior Minister urged in late September 2008, “the IDF should…decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it.”[13] And, insofar as the Dahiya strategy could not be inflicted just yet on Lebanon and Iran, it was predictably pre-tested in Gaza.

The operative plan for the Gaza bloodbath can be gleaned from authoritative statements after the war got underway: “What we have to do is act systematically with the aim of punishing all the organizations that are firing the rockets and mortars, as well as the civilians who are enabling them to fire and hide” (reserve Major-General); “After this operation there will not be one Hamas building left standing in Gaza” (Deputy IDF Chief of Staff); “Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target” (IDF Spokesperson’s Office).[14] Whereas Israel killed a mere 55 Lebanese during the first two days of the 2006 war, the Israeli media exulted at Israel’s “shock and awe” (Maariv)[15] as it killed more than 300 Palestinians in the first two days of the attack on Gaza. Several days into the slaughter an informed Israeli strategic analyst observed, “The IDF, which planned to attack buildings and sites populated by hundreds of people, did not warn them in advance to leave, but intended to kill a great many of them, and succeeded.”[16] Morris could barely contain his pride at “Israel’s highly efficient air assault on Hamas.”[17] The Israeli columnist B. Michael was less impressed by the dispatch of helicopter gunships and jet planes “over a giant prison and firing at its people”[18]—for example, “70…traffic cops at their graduation ceremony, young men in desperate search of a livelihood who thought they’d found it in the police and instead found death from the skies.”[19]

As Israel targeted schools, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, and U.N. sanctuaries, as it slaughtered and incinerated Gaza’s defenseless civilian population (one-third of the 1,200 reported casualties were children), Israeli commentators gloated that “Gaza is to Lebanon as the second sitting for an exam is to the first—a second chance to get it right,” and that this time around Israel had “hurled [Gaza] back,” not 20 years as it promised to do in Lebanon, but “into the 1940s. Electricity is available only for a few hours a day”; that “Israel regained its deterrence capabilities” because “the war in Gaza has compensated for the shortcomings of the [2006] Second Lebanon War”; and that “There is no doubt that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is upset these days….There will no longer be anyone in the Arab world who can claim that Israel is weak.”[20]

New York Times foreign affairs expert Thomas Friedman joined in the chorus of hallelujahs.[21] Israel in fact won the 2006 Lebanon war, according to Friedman, because it had inflicted “substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large,” thereby administering an “education” to Hezbollah: fearing the Lebanese people’s wrath, Hezbollah would “think three times next time” before defying Israel. He expressed hope that Israel was likewise “trying to ‘educate’ Hamas by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population.” To justify the targeting of Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure Friedman asserted that Israel had no other option because “Hezbollah created a very ‘flat’ military network…deeply embedded in the local towns and villages,” and that because “Hezbollah nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians…to restrain Hezbollah in the future.”

Leaving aside Friedman’s hollow coinages—what does “flat” mean?—and leaving aside that he alleged that the killing of civilians was unavoidable but also recommends targeting civilians as a “deterrence” strategy: is it even true that Hezbollah was “embedded in,” “nested among,” and “intertwined” with the Lebanese civilian population? Here’s what Human Rights Watch concluded after an exhaustive investigation: “we found strong evidence that Hezbollah stored most of its rockets in bunkers and weapon storage facilities located in uninhabited fields and valleys, that in the vast majority of cases Hezbollah fighters left populated civilian areas as soon as the fighting started, and that Hezbollah fired the vast majority of its rockets from pre-prepared positions outside villages.” And again, “in all but a few of the cases of civilian deaths we investigated, Hezbollah fighters had not mixed with the civilian population or taken other actions to contribute to the targeting of a particular home or vehicle by Israeli forces.” Indeed, “Israel’s own firing patterns in Lebanon support the conclusion that Hezbollah fired large numbers of its rockets from tobacco fields, banana, olive and citrus groves, and more remote, unpopulated valleys.”[22]

A U.S. Army War College study based largely on interviews with Israeli participants in the Lebanon war similarly found that “the key battlefields in the land campaign south of the Litani River were mostly devoid of civilians, and IDF participants consistently report little or no meaningful intermingling of Hezbollah fighters and noncombatants. Nor is there any systematic reporting of Hezbollah using civilians in the combat zone as shields.” On a related note, the authors report that “the great majority of Hezbollah’s fighters wore uniforms. In fact, their equipment and clothing were remarkably similar to many state militaries’—desert or green fatigues, helmets, web vests, body armor, dog tags, and rank insignia.”[23]

Friedman further asserted that, “rather than confronting Israel’s Army head-on,” Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel’s civilian population to provoke Israeli retaliatory strikes, inevitably killing Lebanese civilians and “inflaming the Arab-Muslim street.” Yet, numerous studies have shown,[24] and Israeli officials themselves conceded[25] that, during its guerrilla war against the Israeli occupying army, Hezbollah only targeted Israeli civilians after Israel targeted Lebanese civilians. In conformity with past practice Hezbollah started firing rockets toward Israeli civilian concentrations during the 2006 war only after Israel inflicted heavy casualties on Lebanese civilians, while Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah avowed that it would target Israeli civilians “as long as the enemy undertakes its aggression without limits or red lines.”[26]

If Israel targeted the Lebanese civilian population and infrastructure during the 2006 war, it was not because it had no choice, and not because Hezbollah had provoked it, but because terrorizing the civilian population was a relatively cost-free method of “education,” much to be preferred over fighting a real foe and suffering heavy casualties, although Hezbollah’s unexpectedly fierce resistance prevented Israel from achieving a victory on the battlefield. In the case of Gaza it was able both to “educate” the population and achieve a military victory because—in the words of Gideon Levy—the “fighting in Gaza” was

"“war deluxe.” Compared with previous wars, it is child’s play—pilots bombing unimpeded as if on practice runs, tank and artillery soldiers shelling houses and civilians from their armored vehicles, combat engineering troops destroying entire streets in their ominous protected vehicles without facing serious opposition. A large, broad army is fighting against a helpless population and a weak, ragged organization that has fled the conflict zones and is barely putting up a fight."[27]

The justification put forth by Friedman in the pages of the Times for targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure amounted to apologetics for state terrorism.[28] It might be recalled that although Hitler had stripped Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher of all his political power by 1940, and his newspaper Der Stuermer had a circulation of only some 15,000 during the war, the International Tribunal at Nuremberg nonetheless sentenced him to death for his murderous incitement.

Beyond restoring its deterrence capacity, Israel’s main goal in the Gaza slaughter was to fend off the latest threat posed by Palestinian moderation. For the past three decades the international community has consistently supported a settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict that calls for two states based on a full Israeli withdrawal to its June 1967 border, and a “just resolution” of the refugee question based on the right of return and compensation. The vote on the annual U.N. General Assembly resolution, “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine,” supporting these terms for resolving the conflict in 2008 was 164 in favor, 7 against (Israel, United States, Australia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau), and 3 abstentions. At the regional level the Arab League in March 2002 unanimously put forth a peace initiative on this basis, which it has subsequently reaffirmed. In recent times Hamas has repeatedly signaled its own acceptance of such a settlement. For example, in March 2008 Khalid Mishal, head of Hamas’s Political Bureau, stated in an interview:

"There is an opportunity to deal with this conflict in a manner different than Israel and, behind it, the U.S. is dealing with it today. There is an opportunity to achieve a Palestinian national consensus on a political program based on the 1967 borders, and this is an exceptional circumstance, in which most Palestinian forces, including Hamas, accept a state on the 1967 borders….There is also an Arab consensus on this demand, and this is a historic situation. But no one is taking advantage of this opportunity. No one is moving to cooperate with this opportunity. Even this minimum that has been accepted by the Palestinians and the Arabs has been rejected by Israel and by the U.S."[29]

Israel is fully cognizant that the Hamas Charter is not an insurmountable obstacle to a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. “[T]he Hamas leadership has recognized that its ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future,” a former Mossad head recently observed. “[T]hey are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967….They know that the moment a Palestinian state is established with their cooperation, they will be obligated to change the rules of the game: They will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original ideological goals.”[30]

In addition, Hamas was “careful to maintain the ceasefire” it entered into with Israel in June 2008, according to an official Israeli publication, despite Israel’s reneging on the crucial component of the truce that it ease the economic siege of Gaza. “The lull was sporadically violated by rocket and mortar shell fire, carried out by rogue terrorist organizations,” the source continues. “At the same time, the [Hamas] movement tried to enforce the terms of the arrangement on the other terrorist organizations and to prevent them from violating it.”[31] Moreover, Hamas was “interested in renewing the relative calm with Israel” (Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin).[32] The Islamic movement could thus be trusted to stand by its word, making it a credible negotiating partner, while its apparent ability to extract concessions from Israel, unlike the hapless Palestinian Authority doing Israel’s bidding but getting no returns, enhanced Hamas’s stature among Palestinians. For Israel these developments constituted a veritable disaster. It could no longer justify shunning Hamas, and it would be only a matter of time before international pressure in particular from the Europeans would be exerted on it to negotiate. The prospect of an incoming U.S. administration negotiating with Iran and Hamas, and moving closer to the international consensus for settling the Israel-Palestine conflict, which some U.S. policymakers now advocate,[33] would have further highlighted Israel’s intransigence. In an alternative scenario, speculated on by Nasrallah, the incoming American administration plans to convene an international peace conference of “Americans, Israelis, Europeans and so-called Arab moderates” to impose a settlement. The one obstacle is “Palestinian resistance and the Hamas government in Gaza,” and “getting rid of this stumbling block is…the true goal of the war.”[34] In either case, Israel needed to provoke Hamas into breaking the truce, and then radicalize or destroy it, thereby eliminating it as a legitimate negotiating partner. It is not the first time Israel confronted such a diabolical threat—an Arab League peace initiative, Palestinian support for a two-state settlement and a Palestinian ceasefire—and not the first time it embarked on provocation and war to overcome it.

In the mid-1970s the PLO mainstream began supporting a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. In addition, the PLO, headquartered in Lebanon, was strictly adhering to a truce with Israel that had been negotiated in July 1981.[35] In August 1981 Saudi Arabia unveiled, and the Arab League subsequently approved, a peace plan based on the two-state settlement.[36] Israel reacted in September 1981 by stepping up preparations to destroy the PLO.[37] In his analysis of the buildup to the 1982 Lebanon war, Israeli strategic analyst Avner Yaniv reported that Yasser Arafat was contemplating a historic compromise with the “Zionist state,” whereas “all Israeli cabinets since 1967” as well as “leading mainstream doves” opposed a Palestinian state. Fearing diplomatic pressures, Israel maneuvered to sabotage the two-state settlement. It conducted punitive military raids “deliberately out of proportion” against “Palestinian and Lebanese civilians” in order to weaken “PLO moderates,” strengthen the hand of Arafat’s “radical rivals,” and guarantee the PLO’s “inflexibility.” However, Israel eventually had to choose between a pair of stark options: “a political move leading to a historic compromise with the PLO, or preemptive military action against it.” To fend off Arafat’s “peace offensive”—Yaniv’s telling phrase—Israel embarked on military action in June 1982. The Israeli invasion “had been preceded by more than a year of effective ceasefire with the PLO,” but after murderous Israeli provocations, the last of which left as many as 200 civilians dead (including 60 occupants of a Palestinian children’s hospital), the PLO finally retaliated, causing a single Israeli casualty.[38] Although Israel used the PLO’s resumption of attacks as the pretext for its invasion, Yaniv concluded that the “raison d’être of the entire operation” was “destroying the PLO as a political force capable of claiming a Palestinian state on the West Bank.[39] It deserves passing notice that in his new history of the “peace process,” Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, provides this capsule summary of the sequence of events just narrated: “In 1982, Arafat’s terrorist activities eventually provoked the Israeli government of Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon into a full-scale invasion of Lebanon.”[40]

Fast forward to 2008. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated in early December 2008 that although Israel wanted to create a temporary period of calm with Hamas, an extended truce “harms the Israeli strategic goal, empowers Hamas, and gives the impression that Israel recognizes the movement.”[41] Translation: a protracted ceasefire that enhanced Hamas’s credibility would have undermined Israel’s strategic goal of retaining control of the West Bank. As far back as March 2007 Israel had decided on attacking Hamas, and only negotiated the June truce because “the Israeli army needed time to prepare.”[42] Once all the pieces were in place, Israel only lacked a pretext. On 4 November, while the American media were riveted on election day, Israel broke the ceasefire by killing seven Palestinian militants, on the flimsy excuse that Hamas was digging a tunnel to abduct Israeli soldiers, and knowing full well that its operation would provoke Hamas into hitting back. “Last week’s ‘ticking tunnel,’ dug ostensibly to facilitate the abduction of Israeli soldiers,” Haaretz reported in mid-November

"was not a clear and present danger: Its existence was always known and its use could have been prevented on the Israeli side, or at least the soldiers stationed beside it removed from harm’s way. It is impossible to claim that those who decided to blow up the tunnel were simply being thoughtless. The military establishment was aware of the immediate implications of the measure, as well as of the fact that the policy of “controlled entry” into a narrow area of the Strip leads to the same place: an end to the lull. That is policy—not a tactical decision by a commander on the ground."[43]

After Hamas predictably resumed its rocket attacks “[i]n retaliation” (Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center),[44] Israel could embark on yet another murderous invasion in order to foil yet another Palestinian peace offensive.

Norman G. Finkelstein
New York City
19 January 2009

[1] Gideon Levy, “The Time of the Righteous,” Haaretz (9 January 2009).
[2] Ethan Bronner, “In Israel, A Consensus That Gaza War Is a Just One,” New York Times (13 January 2009).
[3] 29 December 2008; www.democracynow.org/2008/12/29/israeli_attacks_kill_over_310_in.
[4] Richard Wilson, “Incomplete or Inaccurate Information Can Lead to Tragically Incorrect Decisions to Preempt: The example of OSIRAK,” paper presented at Erice, Sicily (18 May 2007; updated 9 February 2008; www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1589).
[5] Ethan Bronner, “Israel Reminds Foes That It Has Teeth,” New York Times (29 December 2008).
[6] Benny Morris, “Why Israel Feels Threatened,” New York Times (30 December 2008).
[7] “Memorandum for the Record” (1 June 1967), Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. XIX, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967 (Washington, DC: 2004).
[8] Tom Segev, 1967: Israel, the war, and the year that transformed the Middle East (New York: 2007), p. 293, my emphasis.
[9] Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: A critical analysis of Israel’s security and foreign policy (Ann Arbor: 2006), p. 89.
[10] William Arkin, Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: 2007), pp. xxi, xxv-xxvi, 25, 54, 64, 135, 147-48.
[11] Andrew Exum, Hizballah at War: A military assessment (Washington Institute for Near East Policy: December 2006), pp. 9, 11-12.
[12] Benny Morris, “A Second Holocaust? The Threat to Israel” (2 May 2008; www.mideastfreedomforum.org/de/node/66).
[13] Yaron London, “The Dahiya Strategy” (6 October 2008; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3605863,00.html); Gabriel Siboni, “Disproportionate Force: Israel’s concept of response in light of the Second Lebanon War,” Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), 2 October 2008. Attila Somfalvi, “Sheetrit: We should level Gaza neighborhoods” (2 October 2008; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3504922,00.html).
[14] “Israeli General Says Hamas Must Not Be the Only Target in Gaza,” IDF Radio, Tel Aviv, in Hebrew 0600 gmt (26 December 2008), BBC Monitoring Middle East; Tova Dadon, “Deputy Chief of Staff: Worst still ahead” (29 December 2008; http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-36466558,00.html); www.btselem.org/English/Gaza_Strip/20081231_Gaza_Letter_to_Mazuz.asp.
[15] Seumas Milne, “Israel’s Onslaught on Gaza is a Crime That Cannot Succeed,” Guardian (30 December 2008).
[16] Reuven Pedatzur, “The Mistakes of Cast Lead,” Haaretz (8 January 2009).
[17] Morris, “Why Israel Feels Threatened.”
[18] B. Michael, “Déjà Vu in Gaza” (29 December 2008; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3646558,00.html).
[19] Gideon Levy, “Twilight Zone/Trumpeting for War,” Haaretz (2 January 2009).
[20] Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, “Israel and Hamas Are Both Paying a Steep Price in Gaza,” Haaretz (10 January 2009); Ari Shavit, “Analysis: Israel’s victories in Gaza make up for its failures in Lebanon,” Haaretz (12 January 2009); Guy Bechor, “A Dangerous Victory” (12 January 2009; www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3654505,00.html).
[21] Thomas L. Friedman, “Israel’s Goals in Gaza?,” New York Times (14 January 2009).
[22] Human Rights Watch, Why They Died: Civilian casualties in Lebanon during the 2006 war (New York: 2007), pp. 5, 14, 40-41, 45-46, 48, 51, 53.
[23] Stephen Biddle and Jeffrey A. Friedman, The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the Future of Warfare: Implications for army and defense policy (Carlisle, PA: 2008), pp. 43-44, 45.
[24] Human Rights Watch, Civilian Pawns: Laws of war violations and the use of weapons on the Israel-Lebanon border (New York: 1996); Maoz, Defending the Holy Land, pp. 213-14, 224-25, 252; Augustus Richard Norton, Hezbollah: A short history (Princeton: 2007), pp. 77, 86.
[25] Judith Palmer Harik, Hezbollah: The changing face of terrorism (London: 2004), pp. 167-68.
[26] Human Rights Watch, Civilians Under Assault: Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on Israel in the 2006 war (New York: 2007), p. 100. HRW asserts that Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israeli civilians were not retaliatory but provides no supporting evidence.
[27] Gideon Levy, “The IDF Has No Mercy for the Children in Gaza Nursery Schools,” Haaretz (15 January 2009).
[28] Glenn Greenwald, “Tom Friedman Offers a Perfect Definition of ‘Terrorism’” (14 January 2009; www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/14/friedman/).
[29] Mouin Rabbani, “A Hamas Perspective on the Movement’s Evolving Role: An interview with Khalid Mishal, Part II,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Summer 2008).
[30] “What Hamas Wants,” Mideast Mirror (22 December 2008).
[31] Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center, The Six Months of the Lull Arrangement (December 2008), pp. 2, 6, 7.
[32] “Hamas Wants Better Terms for Truce,” Jerusalem Post (21 December 2008). Diskin told the Israeli cabinet that Hamas would renew the truce if Israel lifted the siege of Gaza, stopped military attacks and extended the truce to the West Bank.
[33] Richard N. Haass and Martin Indyk, “Beyond Iraq: A new U.S. strategy for the Middle East,” and Walter Russell Mead, “Change They Can Believe In: To make Israel safe, give Palestinians their due,” in Foreign Affairs, January-February 2009.
[34] Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s Speech Delivered at the Central Ashura Council, 31 December 2008.
[35] Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: the United States, Israel and the Palestinians (Boston: 1983), chaps. 3, 5.
[36] Yehuda Lukacs (ed), The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: a documentary record, 1967-1990 (Cambridge: 1992), pp. 477-79.
[37] Yehoshaphat Harkabi, Israel’s Fateful Hour (New York: 1988), p. 101.
[38] Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The abduction of Lebanon (New York: 1990), pp. 197, 232.
[39} Avner Yaniv, Dilemmas of Security: Politics, strategy and the Israeli experience in Lebanon (Oxford: 1987), pp. 20-23, 50-54, 67-70, 87-89, 100-1, 105-6, 113, 143.
[40] Martin Indyk, Innocent Abroad: An intimate account of American peace diplomacy in the Middle East (New York: 2009), p. 75.
[41] Saed Bannoura, “Livni Calls for a Large Scale Military Offensive in Gaza,” IMEMC & Agencies (10 December 2008; www.imemc.org/article/57960).
[42] Uri Blau, “IDF Sources: Conditions not yet optimal for Gaza exit,” Haaretz (8 January 2009); Barak Ravid, “Disinformation, Secrecy, and Lies: How the Gaza offensive came about,” Haaretz (28 December 2008).
[43] Zvi Bar’el, “Crushing the Tahadiyeh,” Haaretz (16 November 2008). Cf. Uri Avnery, “The Calculations behind Israel’s Slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza” (2 January 2009; www.redress.cc/palestine/uavnery20080102).
[44] The Six Months of the Lull Arrangement, p. 3.

Is Palestine a Counterexample to Pacifism? by Matias Bulnes, NYC

2009-01-21T23:01:00.018-05:00

While the US celebrates an unprecedented historical event, in a remote point on the globe UN officials witness a discouragingly familiar scene of destruction and desolation. The first black president of the US brings joy and hope for a better future. But we should not forget the irony that at the same time Obama became US president Israelis and Palestinians were sinking even more deeply into a nightmare that seems to outlast generation after generation. Conscientious Americans will hope that the change Obama has forecasted will spill onto Palestine. But let’s not hold our breaths: the conflict has seen politicians fail one after another, many notable.

The international community has reacted to Israel’s military excursion into the Gaza Strip as usual: repudiating bloodshed yet hesitant to condemn either side. What will likely happen is what has been happening for the last century. This outburst of violence will ease up. There will be months, years, hopefully decades, of tamped hostilities between Zionists and Arabs; then another outburst. International alarm and UN resolutions will follow suit. The sad truth is we are out of ideas. All one sees around is variations of old schemes of solution that have already been rejected by either Israelis or Palestinians.

But let’s not point our fingers at the international actors; too many have been pointed in this endless conflict. Perhaps it is nobody’s fault. I see people heatedly debating who is on the right, whether Israelis or Palestinians. But at this point their historical arguments, correct or incorrect, sound to me like futile abstractions. Whether or not it has a right to be, Israel is not going anywhere—nor are Palestinians. To the extent that both parties are unable to accept these facts there will be no solution. What’s worse, even if both parties accept these facts there might be no solution. Perhaps it is time to contemplate this possibility. Perhaps the idea that all conflicts have a peaceful solution is untenable after all.

The pacifist hopes for nonviolent understanding between conflicting parties. But this is more a prescription than a practical solution. It prescribes that peace should be put before any other ideal. The reality is that many people don’t and getting them to change their minds may turn out impossible (at least by nonviolent means). The case of some religious people is instructive. While they regard earthly life as secondary, their religion may dictate goals that trump the value of their own lives as well as that of others. Oftentimes these goals can only be achieved at the expense of some other groups, violence to follow. Arguably there is an element of this in the Palestine conflict.

But inevitable violence does not necessitate religious intolerance. A sufficiently Kantian outlook can produce similar outcomes. Nationalisms typically trade on abstractions such as the nation’s special dignity or worth. These, the Kantian line goes, also trump any practical goals: they are matters of principle and should never be up for negotiation—as politicians say. The result is analogous: if two groups perceive the recognition of their dignity as incompatible with the existence of the other, violence is in the offing. Arguably there is an element of this too in the Palestine conflict.

In his first day as president of the US, Obama hinted at an active role of his government in the Palestine conflict. Does he expect to solve it? Perhaps. But even if there is no solution to the conflict and bloodshed will be forthcoming no matter what we do, it would still seem immoral to remain indifferent before such devastating human suffering. If unable to solve the conflict, we should not renounce palliative measures intended to minimize the destruction and casualties it will claim.

In fact, it would not be surprising that Obama sees the future role of the US in Palestine as primarily palliative. After all, he does realize that the hawkish foreign policy in the Middle East has been earning the US more troubles than benefits lately. His plan to restructure the energy supply of the country has been insistently framed in the broader context of the war against Islamic terrorism. However, it would be myopic not to acknowledge that anti-American sentiments have been abetted by the US’s interventionist policy in Palestine. Obama, as any other politician, cannot publicly use this as an argument to withdraw influence from the area, for this would amount to admitting a military defeat according to Bush’s rhetoric of the “war” on terror. But terminological issues aside, this seems to be the course of action that gives the US the most bang for the buck and will probably occur anyway if Obama's energy plan succeeds and the US has no longer business in the Middle East.

In sum, I raise the question what is the right course of action for the international community in the Palestine conflict. Nothing seems to work because the Israeli and Palestinian platforms of negotiation appear to be wholly incompatible. For years the world has wished that these platforms were dictated by the extremists and that eventually a majority of moderates would emerge. By now it seems increasingly clear that the extremists have significant support. Hence, no solution. Still, I believe it is our moral obligation to provide humanitarian aid in the area any time it’s needed. However, it is not clear to me, nor perhaps to Obama, that more direct intervention in the conflict is going to do any good to anybody. Should we keep on trying?

Holiday Hiatus

2008-12-15T13:47:00.001-05:00

We'll be taking a break for the next three weeks. See you in the new year!

Where will the anger go: reaction or resistance? by Ornaith O'Dowd, NYC

2008-12-15T13:44:00.003-05:00

As might be expected in hard times, there is a lot of anger around. Much depends on how it is directed. I'd like to make some very brief remarks on the possibilities.

All too often, public anger and frustration about hardship and uncertainty is vented not at the powerful elites who benefit, but at the nearest and most vulnerable scapegoats. The forms this takes may range from reactionary anti-union, anti-immigrant, or anti-public sector chatter on comment threads to brutal hate crimes like the killing of Jose Sucuzhanay, who was beaten to death with an aluminum baseball bat while his attackers yelled anti-gay and anti-Latino slurs. Now, of course, neither anti-union sentiment nor hate crimes are limited to recessions, but there is reason to suppose that we will see an increase in both as the economic crisis deepens: it is an all-too-familiar story. Recently-released FBI figures for 2007 suggest a rise in anti-Latino hate crimes (and anti-gay hate crimes, but a drop in hate crimes overall); history suggests the disastrous consequences if such reactionary trends are left to proceed unchecked.

Some recent events, however, offer another possible story: the anti-bailout rallies on Wall Street, the astonishing victory of the workers at Republic Windows in Chicago, countrywide protest marches against government cutbacks in Ireland, the continuing unrest in Greece. While it is unlikely that all involved in these events experienced an epiphany of class consciousness, we can say at least that their anger was, broadly, on target (if not, perhaps, grounded in a highly systematic analysis); I think we can say, further, that many "ordinary people"-- a curious phrase, I have always thought-- are rather rapidly coming to the realization that their interests just are not the same as the interests of Henry Paulson and his erstwhile officemates on Wall Street.

The "conventional wisdom" usually dispensed in response to recessions is meeting increased skepticism and resistance. Unconditional bank bailouts and severe cuts to public services are not inevitable, "no brainer" responses to economic crisis: they are the result of a very clear and deliberate choice to support the interests of the economically privileged and not those of workers. Budget gaps could be filled by reducing military spending or increasing taxes on the rich, but instead, policymakers choose to cut services upon which middle-class and working-class people depend: healthcare, education, mass transit, fire departments, and so on.

The next step is to see these policy choices not so much as reprehensible actions by individuals but as structural parts of a system-- capitalism-- and that this system, because produced by human choice and action, can be changed or replaced. It is not the only, ultimate, or inevitable system: it arose at a specific time, under specific conditions, and there is no reason that we cannot do better. Marx offers us a way to see an alternative, but he did not sketch the details of that alternative: that's up to us.

The Problem with Paulson's Plan by Graham Parsons, NYC

2008-12-01T15:24:00.008-05:00

Newsflash: The US is in the midst of a credit crisis. Okay, you know that. But let's be clear about what the crisis is. The crisis is the unwillingness or inability of lenders, mainly banks, to give loans to people and institutions. The flow of credit had been tightening for some time but finally became a full blown crisis in September when banks literally stopped lending to each other. This was a terrifying moment that threatened the whole of the economy. Without lending, there is no investment. Without investment, there is no work. Without work, there is no consumption. If you want a sense of just how scary the crisis is, look at how quickly it caused the rabidly anti-interventionist Bush administration to jump to its feet and demand state action.

The action the administration, led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, demanded has gone through various incarnations. I can count four stages of its development and I’ll bet their will be more to come. First, there was the initial request for $700 billion to do one thing—buy worthless mortgage-backed securities from investment banks in order take the bad assets off their books and give them fresh capital. Next, the plan was to use half of the $700 billion to invest directly in struggling banks, thereby giving them fresh capital, and use the other half to buy the worthless mortgage-backed securities. Then, the plan to buy worthless stuff was scrapped altogether and the second half of the initial $700 billion was now going to be used to support direct lending to consumers. At the moment, this is where the plan for that initial $700 billion stands.

Now we’ve reached a fourth stage. Paulson has just proposed spending another $800 billion to do two things. One is to set up of facility with $200 billion that would support lending to consumers, students and small businesses. Though no one would dare say it, this looks suspiciously like a socialist bank, although one that is no doubt intended to have a short life. The other $600 billion is to go to propping up mortgages that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are responsible for and which are crippling those institutions.

The purpose of each plan is to get credit flowing again. Whether it is buying bad assets from banks or investing directly in them, buying mortgages or giving out loans to consumers, the thrust of the administration’s reaction to our present economic woes is to keep credit in the pockets of Americans at “normal” rates.

What can be said against this?

Well, many have objected to the manner in which these plans have been or will be implemented. Naomi Klein has led the charge in this regard (see here, for example). The Paulson plan is an anti-democratic attempt to take the keys of the treasury away from the public and give them to Wall Street bankers. The reason for this concern is the unchecked power that the plans give to the Treasury Secretary.

But these concerns aside, there are still real problems with the plan’s stated aims. As a number of commentators have been pointing out (William Greider for example), the problem with the plan is that it is single-mindedly focused on restoring the financial sector to “normal.” The reason this is a mistake is that the “normal” flow of credit is simply unsustainable. The financial sector of the US economy has grown way out of proportion to the real economy. The amount of lending and investing that has gone on has no basis in reality. What needs to happen is more than just imposing more regulation on the industry. Rather, what we need is for the financial sector to fundamentally realign itself with the real economy. This will be painful and take time, but there is no viable alternative.

One way of grasping the overgrown character of the banking and related industries is by seeing that the extent of the problem is far greater than $700 billion dollars. It is starting to become apparent that most major banks are so insolvent that rescuing them might require trillions of dollars. As an example, Citigroup, even after receiving $25 billion from the government, still faced collapse last weekend and required another $20 billion in capital and around $300 billion in guarantees just to stay afloat. And there is no reason to think Citigroup is an exceptional case. Economists Dimitri Papadimitriou and Randall Wray put it this way: “it is probable that many and perhaps most financial institutions are insolvent today—with a black hole of negative worth that would swallow Paulson’s entire $700 billion in one gulp.” If the real economy could sustain the enormous investments of the banking industry as it currently exists, it is unlikely that they would have been so stupid as to acquire so many worthless assets.

The amount of credit these institutions dole out is ridiculous. The private sector has come to be awash in credit while wages and savings have declined. As John Cassidy reports, in 1980, the total amount of debt in the US economy was equal to GDP. Today, however, it is three times GDP. This helps explain why the financial sector is so big. So long as there is unlimited credit, consumption can stay high enough to keep a hefty flow of investments available for Wall Street. But at a certain point, American consumers and producers cannot sustain so much debt and then the whole system collapses. This is a rough approximation the problem we are in. It is a problem that the over-inflated financial sector precipitated, not one that it can solve by returning to “normal.”

Our economic problem today extends far beyond the credit crisis. The fact is that the real economy of production and consumption is contracting. Consumers are finally tightening their belts. Paulson’s plan seems to presume that this is because consumers and manufacturers can’t get their hands on credit. As he sees it, the problem is that consumers and producers are clamoring for more loans and credit cards but being turned away by lenders. Thus, he thinks once credit starts flowing again, everything will be fine. But consumers and manufacturers aren’t spending because they don’t want to. They see that going into further debt now is a bad idea. Who wants to buy a car or take out a home loan today anyway? This means that restoring the “normal” flow of credit is impossible. Without the demand, there simply is no economic purpose for our bloated financial sector.

As I argued in my last column, the alternative program for the banking industry is a socialist one. Banks ought to be nationalized and radically restructured so that they can serve the public in a stable, efficient manner. This is also a more just program in that it avoids the coercive power bankers presently have over our lives.

The strategy for reviving the broader economy is to invest in the real economy, not the shadow banking industry. With a strong Keynesian program of government investment in infrastructure and social services we can put people to work and put real money in the pockets of consumers. This would be a much more effective strategy for building a stable, prosperous economy. Fortunately, something like this appears to be on the agenda of the Obama administration.

Report on US-Latin America's Relations by Matias Bulnes, NYC

2008-11-26T15:33:00.017-05:00

Last Monday the Brookings Institution released a report on the current state of relations between the US and Latin America, and the major challenges faced by the region, finally suggesting future policies to president-elect Obama. While highlighting the dramatic changes Latin America has undergone over the last two decades, the report insists on the need for respectful collaboration within the Americas.

The main reason why the US should seek collaboration with Latin American countries, according to the report, is pragmatic, having to do with the nature of some of the challenges faced by the region. Climate change, migratory policies, drug control, and nuclear growth exemplify challenges that demand a joint response—the report says. If everyone takes independent measures, the solutions achieved for these problems will doubtlessly be suboptimal and perhaps even insufficient.

The report also points out the feasibility of such collaboration with Latin America given the democratic stability and relative prosperity many Latin American countries have achieved during the last decades. While it still is poorer than the US or Canada, Latin America is on the rise, and drawing economic and diplomatic attention from various points on the globe. Latin America is entrenching its connections with Asia and Europe and as a result has become more independent of the US. But this boost in international participation is fueled by the consolidation of democracy in Latin American countries which also makes them better partners for the US.

In sum, the report ably argues for the utility and feasibility of uplifting the collaboration between the US and Latin America. What the report deliberately omits is their willingness to partner with each other. The last half a century of relations between the US and Latin America has been rocky, to say the least. There still is much mistrust and animosity between them—especially from Latin America toward the US. And though it is true that they both will pay the price for not collaborating, it is far from obvious that the US will find a warm response from many Latin American countries.

Consider the case of Venezuela—one of the biggest and most influential countries in Latin America. President Chávez has made the US a cornerstone of his political discourse. Chávez routinely uses “the Empire”—as he calls the US—as a scapegoat for all the evils in the world, both real and imagined. Should the US expect a warm response from him to collaborate on a common agenda? Even with Obama as president that seems unlikely. For no collaboration seems possible unless Chávez tempers his anti-American rhetoric. And yet Chávez’s popularity heavily relies upon his incendiary discourse. Thus barring a sudden change in its political direction, it seems unlikely that Venezuela will be on-board with a collaboration plan.

And with Venezuela a number of other Latin American countries follow suit. Cuba, Bolivia and Ecuador, all belong to Chávez’s circle of trust. Moreover, all of the political leaderships of these countries have capitalized on anti-American sentiments in their respective nations. Similarly then, no much warmth should be expected from them.

On the other extreme of the spectrum is Venezuela’s neighbor, Colombia. Unlike Venezuela, in Colombia the leftist rhetoric has worn out. Beset by guerrillas and their paramilitary counterparts, the Colombian people has grown used to the idea that violence will not subside without crushing the guerrilla. The US has thus been perceived as an ally in their efforts to regain internal peace. President Uribe is without a doubt the US’s closest ally in the region and one that will certainly welcome collaboration with the US. However, even here there is a little obstacle: the Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The US congress has proved reluctant to tighten the economic and political ties of the US with a country that tops the lists of violence in the world. In fact, Obama himself has opposed the FTA with Colombia and so it seems possible that it won’t be forthcoming during his administration. If so, the question arises whether the Colombian leadership will take offence. The report recommends approving the FTA but skeptics still remain. In any event, it is a sign of how difficult things can be with Latin America that the US will have to work so hard to get the favor of its foremost ally in the region.

Mexico would make for a good partner if it weren’t for the migration issue. For one, there are anti-American sentiments in the mid and lower classes of Mexican society, but more importantly, the Bush administration has abetted them with its project of building a wall along the border. The Mexican government has rarely been so close in ideology to the US, but I can’t help to be skeptical of the long-term workability of a common agenda with a nation the US is treating with so much disdain as to build a wall between them.

The report also recommends a complete redefinition of the US policy toward Cuba. Cuba has been a tenacious wedge between the US and Latin America, shaping in large measure the relations between the two. The report argues for the need to tamp down the hostilities with Castro’s regime if any close collaboration with Latin America as a whole is to be possible. Obama is in good standing to begin this revival of diplomatic relations with Cuba, but it would seem unrealistic to expect that the trust will be restored within Obama’s mandate. Also, any attempt to restore the trust will require mutual respect for each other’s internal affairs (a point omitted in the report). But this would seem very costly for any administration since it would arouse the fury of the Cuban American community. Again, not an easy task here.

Chile and Brazil are perhaps the best partners for the US in the region. Chile because of its economic leadership, Brazil because of its size, both are emblematic countries which are stable and economically sound. Also, because of historical circumstances there is a healthy distance between the US and their internal affairs. This in turn clothes Chile and Brazil with an image of neutrality that makes them more effective as negotiators within the region than submissive US allies such as Colombia. The US must engage them in a way that preserves this asset.

In sum, I believe that the report recommends the right course of action for the US toward Latin America. Nevertheless, the report does not acknowledge the magnitude of the challenge lying ahead. Latin America has internal divisions of its own, its politics is crossed by historical animosities and aspirations. Get them all to work together may be hard in its own merit. Expecting that Obama’s administration will get them to work together and with the US may well be impossible.

Solidarity post-Prop 8 by Ornaith O'Dowd, NYC

2008-11-17T20:14:00.004-05:00

I have been both encouraged and disturbed by the activism that has followed the passing of anti-gay ballot measures on November 4th: encouraged because of the energy and engagement that have brought thousands on to the streets in support of equality but disturbed by the all-too-vocal minority of my fellow queers that has scapegoated African-Americans for the California result. This type of discourse is precisely what the gay rights movement needs to disavow if it is to succeed. Indeed, all progressive social movements have something important to learn from these post-November 4th debates.

Because of one exit poll, which showed that African-Americans had supported Prop 8 by a larger margin than other ethnic/racial groups, some white gay people began blaming them for the vote, berating them for failing to support what many see as this generation's greatest civil rights struggle. Why, this segment of white gay opinion demanded, can't "they" identify with "our" struggle when "they" were denied civil rights for so long and had to fight so hard for them?

Explaining all that is wrong with this sort of statement may be a useful exercise in self-examination for the gay rights movement.

First, we should be wary of basing a political analysis on one piece of polling data. African-Americans make up something like 6% of California's population, making it far-fetched numerically as well as politically to place so much blame on them, and exit polls, while sometimes useful, are hardly unimpeachable sources of certainty. Lest we forget, majorities-- albeit slimmer ones-- of other ethnic groups supported Prop 8; in any case, why see race or ethnicity as the more relevant way to "cut" the results? Why not focus on age, sex, religious affiliation, economic status, or other indicators? Moreover, California was not the only state to pass an anti-gay ballot measure on November 4th; although it is understandable that particular attention is given to that result since it was more surprising--- and given that same-sex marriages had already taken place there-- the result is only one part of a broader picture. In Arkansas, with an 84% white electorate according to CNN's exit poll, a ballot measure banning gay couples from adopting children passed with a solid majority. According to this poll, the state has a higher proportion of African-American voters, and the anti-gay measure won more narrowly among them than among whites. But nobody talked about that.

Second, those engaging in scapegoating seem to forget that some African-Americans are gay, and some gay folks are African-American. It may sound silly to have to point this out, but some of the discourse floating around the "blogosphere" and, sadly, beyond suggests that all too many simply do not-- or will not-- recognize this. Why can't "they" identify with "our" struggle? Well, some of "them" are us!

Part of the problem is that the gay community and the gay rights movement have become identified with economically privileged white men. This has had the double effect of marginalizing those of us in the gay community who are not economically privileged white men while also rendering attempts to cast the gay rights struggle as a civil rights struggle not only implausible but quite possibly offensive. While economically privileged white gay men are of course as entitled to press for equal rights as anyone else, I imagine many African-Americans might find it rather hard to take suggestions that they have a common experience and common struggle (especially given the deep-rooted, systematic racism that continues to pervade U.S. society). I am not suggesting that these men should stop participating in the struggle for gay rights, but I think it is a good time to ask why that struggle is not-- or at least is not perceived to be-- diverse and inclusive, and it is a good time to ask how this struggle fits with other movements fighting against inequality, injustice, and oppression.

There was some disbelief among white queers that their vote for Barack Obama was not "reciprocated" in the Prop 8 votes of African-Americans. Unfortunately solidarity is not always so easy, so "instant." If all marginalized groups in U.S. society-- women, people of color, immigrants, the working class-- had voted out of solidarity with all other marginalized groups on November 4th, we would have had dramatically different results: Cynthia McKinney would probably be picking her cabinet as I write! It cannot, therefore, be any surprise that these groups did not "rescue" gay rights. Although many queers of all colors and classes have been active participants in a wide range of social justice struggles, the most powerful gay rights organizations seem more focused on running celebrity-studded awards galas and sending out credit card offers than on fighting oppression on all fronts. There has been a tendency toward "mainstreaming" gay rights issues: that is, removing them from any kind of radical political context and casting them as rights to assimilate. Such a strategy seems to suggest that, as soon as formal equality for LGBT people is achieved, we will retreat behind our picket fences and avoid any disruption to the status quo. Given the dominance of this sort of gay rights politics-- at least in public perception-- people fighting against racism or classism might well ask why they should stand with the LGBT community when there is reason to doubt that the LGBT community will stand with them in their struggles.
The gay rights movement needs to be radical again; its center of gravity should be the streets, not the boardrooms of "gay friendly" corporations, and its mission should be justice for all and an end to all oppression, to the very idea of relations of domination. This means not only acting in solidarity with other communities but looking at its own agenda: for many queers, protection from job discrimination and hate crimes may be just as urgent as the fight for mariage rights (indispensable though they are).

Of course, solidarity should go both ways; homophobia ought to be vigorously challenged in every community. This will surely involve some difficult conversations. The claim that the gay rights struggle is a civil rights struggle is sometimes met with skepticism and even annoyance in the African-American community. Although I think the gay rights are indeed civil rights, I think it is a worthwhile conversation to have. It seems to me that the objections to the comparison with the civil rights struggle of African-Americans are of two main kinds: (1) it is wrong to compare the two because LGBTs have not suffered the same pain as African-Americans and (2) it is wrong to compare the two because gay people can "pass" and African-Americans (mostly) cannot. (Of course there some object to the comparison for purely homophobic reasons, but this is not as interesting a claim.)

With respect to (1), it should be emphasized that it is one thing to compare and another to equate. I think it is true that the pain suffered by African-Americans has few parallels in human history in terms of its sheer scale. This unique history and experience should be honored. Nevertheless, the comparison with gay rights is valid, since there are highly relevant similarities. No-one should be denied civil rights for morally arbitrary reasons (e.g. race or sexual orientation). On this point, a short anecdote: when teaching an undergraduate class on privilege and discrimination, I found that students who at first resisted the comparison of racism and homophobia often changed their perspective after I shared with them some every-day examples of discrimination and lack of privilege that gay people face. Whether it is because of race or (perceived) sexual orientation, it is simply a painful human experience to be stared at, mocked, verbally harrassed, threatened, or assaulted by people who hate you for being part of a stigmatized minority. None of this should be taken to underestimate the extraordinary pervasiveness of racism in our society-- a fact that white privilege tends to obscure for many of us.

With respect to (2), the simple answer is that gay people should not have to "pass" in order to be treated fairly. It is useful, though, to pursue this kind of objection, perhaps with the following thought experiment: suppose there is a reliable and simple method through which an African-American can appear "white." Should any African-American be told to use this method to escape racism rather than pursuing and end to racism? Obviously not.

These are simple arguments, with which I doubt many readers of this blog will disagree, but my aim in airing them here has been to point out that these conversations do not seem to be happening often enough. Without them-- uncomfortable as they may be-- solidarity among all groups fighting for justice and equality will remain something of a chimera.

New Opportunities: Socialize the Banks! by Graham Parsons, NYC

2008-11-10T12:44:00.010-05:00

There is good reason to see last Tuesday’s election as a turning point. With the economy foremost on their minds, a significant majority of voters chose a presidential candidate with an explicitly progressive economic message over a candidate of the laissez-faire mold. Americans may lean to the right on cultural issues and foreign policy. But when it comes to the economy, as many have thought all along, Americans lean to the left. The incoming Obama administration has a mandate to pursue a progressive agenda. With Democratic control of both houses of Congress and with the public clamoring for major initiatives, the possibility of rehabilitating the welfare state by enacting a new New Deal is real.

Even more encouragingly, the repudiation of Reaganomics is not only coming from the electorate. With a Republican in the White House and at the behest of the Treasury Secretary, himself the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, the US has forced some of the largest investment banks in the world to sell it hundreds of billions in preferred stock. “The US has nationalized parts of its banking industry.” Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear coming from my radio. But it’s true.

As any lefty will tell you, the cause of the crisis that precipitated this intervention is endemic to laissez-faire capitalism. The need to save the banks from collapse and to get them lending again is the inevitable result of an unregulated financial system. But, astonishingly, this is what (former) neoliberal diehards are saying too. When I hear Alan Greenspan telling Congress that, to his shock, it turns out that unregulated financial systems don’t work, I want to call the police and tell them that some evil genius has taken over the airwaves and is carrying out some elaborate, and no doubt sick, prank. But that was really Alan Greenspan!

And the same thing is happening across the globe. Banks are being nationalized across Europe and the blame is being put at the feet of neoliberalism. Even the Washington Post wonders aloud, “Is this the end of American capitalism?”

Some reflection is in order here. The left has spent so long trying to thwart the domination of maniacal laissez-faire ideologues that such a dramatic turnabout can be utterly bewildering. Anyone who has spent decades trying to convince others they are not insane, will be forgiven for feeling confused when suddenly brought into the mainstream. But we need to adjust quickly and take advantage of our newfound strength and seize the opportunities that we have. We must drop our defensiveness. It is time to be confident and aggressively work to push the new government’s agenda in what used to seem like radical directions.

With this in mind, I propose a true socialist program for at least parts of the banking industry. What makes a socialized banking sector not out of the question now is the fact that we no longer have to worry about any principled objection to the involvement of the state in the capitalist marketplace. Those days are over, at least for the time being. The consensus now is that the state must guide the economy to serve the common good. The only thing to debate is what the common good is and how the state can best serve it. Truly, this is a major change in our discourse.

There are roughly two sorts of bank nationalization programs we could pursue. The first is the one the US and seemingly all other countries are presently taking. Let’s call it restructure and privatize. On this program, the partially nationalized banks will be forced to accept new regulations governing their operations such as more reasonable capital/asset ratios, executive compensation, and lending standards. They might also be forced to sell off their bad assets, change their management and members of their boards, to break up into smaller firms, or be acquired by other more stable banks. Then, once they are viewed as capable of serving the common good in the market, they will be privatized, sold off hopefully at a price that turns a profit for the state.

Bank nationalization programs of this sort are not uncommon in capitalist societies. This will be the third time the US has done something like this—the first coming in the Great Depression when the US bought stock in nearly 6,000 banks, the second in 1984 when the government bought nearly the entirety of Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust during the so-called savings and loan crisis. Crises also led Mexico and France to nationalize their banks in the 1980’s. And in the 1990’s, Sweden and Japan, facing crises, had to do the same thing. In all cases, the banks were restructured and later privatized.

This gives us good reason to view periodic banking collapses as endemic to capitalism. As Greenspan says, left to their own devices financial industries cannot manage risk and will eventually fall apart. But history also shows that the regulatory regimes put in place during nationalization drives do not have lasting effects. Either the regulatory systems are later attenuated by the state at the request of the banks so that profligate lending can resume or banks simply find ways to work around the regulations. At some point, the banks get themselves into another mess and the state must step it again.

Contrast this with an alternative nationalization program, call it restructure and socialize. On this model, the nationalized banks will be restructured but not with the aim of making them more functional in the private sector. Rather, the aim is to make them into public institutions, run democratically, whose function is to directly invest in projects that serve the people. Socialized banks could be used to fund enterprises, both public and private, that are crucial to the public good. A banking system like this could be extremely useful to the public works projects that the new administration has promised and which are badly needed. Roads, bridges, rail services, green energy, hospitals, health clinics, housing and schools could be funded with low interest loans from these new banks.

Socializing the banks would require their near complete purchase by the state instead of only in part. But this needn’t make a socialist program prohibitive. Not every bank need be socialized but only one or two of the major ones, and when banks are collapsing, as they are at the moment, they can be bought up on the cheap.

In addition to being essential to the reconstruction of the welfare state, there are two other reasons to favor the socialist alternative. First, a socialized banking system is more just. This is because of the significance of banking to all citizens. As the present crisis shows, we cannot survive without these institutions operating properly. They are, as we hear constantly, too important to fail. Any institution so important should not be in private hands because it makes the rest of us beholden to its owners. In a system like this, we survive at the whim of the bankers. This is a violation of our right to freedom. Only with the banks controlled by the public can we avoid their coercive power.

Second, a socialized banking system can help prevent future crises. A socialized system, properly administered, will be better at managing risk because the goal of its lending will not be getting the greatest profits. Investment bubbles like the one in residential housing that just popped are the result of investment banks recklessly hunting for high returns. These banks, constantly looking for places to place surplus capital, pump billions, even trillions, into momentarily favored sectors, thereby wildly inflating the value of assets in that sector and leading to eventual meltdown. A socialized bank will not prowl the economy like that. It will, ideally, find socially useful projects with little risk.

All in all, a socialized banking system will be a more stable, just program that benefits the public. Two months ago I would have thought this proposal was a pipe dream. But now, as an example of the opportunities we have, I honestly think this is a possibility. Of course, the new administration won’t find this appealing, but that is not the point. The point is to make the idea reverberate in the public sphere.

Will Tuesday's Election Make History? by Matias Bulnes, NYC

2008-11-02T11:18:00.024-05:00

Every election is the most important one ever. At least that is how the media portray it and people perceive it. Tuesday’s election is no exception to the rule. The media and public opinion have attached an enormous historical significance to it, using expressions such as "crucial" or "tipping point" to describe it. Of course the US is the most powerful country in the world and American culture a dominant force in our era. If only for this reason the election of its political leadership has a tremendous impact everywhere. But this has been the case with every presidential election in the US since at least the early XX century. More interesting is the question whether this election is special over previous ones, whether we should not take it routinely. Is it really more important than the last election or the one before? Can this election significantly alter the course of history? Let's analyze the issue carefully.

One of the arguments underlying this magnifying view of the ongoing election appeals to the international scenario and an alleged redistribution of power in the world. Since the end of the Cold War there has been no counterbalance to American dominance. This state of affairs, some fear, is beginning to change. China has had a decade of persistent growth around the 10% mark which has earned it both power and influence. China still is considerably poorer than the US or Europe, but if they continue to grow at half the present rate, not for too long. Additionally, its monstrous dimensions grant China an important advantage in the game—same advantage the US has enjoyed over its dismembered European neighbors. China need not equal the GDP of the US to surpass it in power and influence. Can the outcome of this election interfere with China’s raise to the summit?

Like it or not, let’s first accept that China’s investiture as first power is very likely inevitable. It is part of the natural historical progression that countries occupy the position of superpower temporarily. And given China's tremendous success and size it seems poised to be next superpower. The question is when (rather than if) this will occur. In the light of this, Tuesday’s election is crucial if the outcome can alter the speed of China's development. Can either candidate do this? Hardly because China's growth can be explained in large measure by internal events such as an accelerated urbanization and industrialization.

Barring influencing its economic development, the only way the next US president could play a significant historical role in relation to China would be by passing the title of first power to the Chinese. But this also seems highly improbable. Granted that China will likely be the next superpower, the imminence of this event is oftentimes exaggerated. For all its growth China is nowhere near the US in economic stature. The US still doubles China in GDP and its share of the World GDP does not seem to be in decline. Most likely the US will continue to be the most powerful nation on Earth when the next president leaves the White House, and very likely, for the years to follow.

The remaining international conditions have not changed significantly since Bush won the reelection. The threat of terrorism is still lurking, the Iraq War has worsened but is essentially equally untenable, the Israel-Palestine conflict is in the same deplorable state it has been for the last decade. So if the significance of Tuesday’s election is not being played in the international scenario, is it being played in the domestic one?

Some particularities of this election make it look special. First, the two frontrunners, Obama and McCain, stand in striking contrast even aside from their unremarkable political differences. One of them is unusually young, the other is unusually old; one is Black the other is White; one is the child of an immigrant the other belongs to a traditional military family. But all of these amount to simple anecdote. More important is the fact that this election has attracted more public attention than recent ones. The response to phone polls has been better and more enthusiastic than in previous election years and experts expect the turnout to near the historical pick (the 1960 Election between Kennedy and Nixon had a 64% turnout, the highest in recent history). But in itself this does not seem to me to endow the election with historical significance. It perhaps shows that the election is perceived as very significant, but this is hardly enough evidence that it will be. After all, if it is not, it would not be the first time public perception misrepresents reality.

In isolation none of the above conveys the historical significance of Tuesday’s election. But when put together within a cogent, independent historical narrative they constitute strong evidence that we may be witnessing an outstanding presidential race. I believe that the only coherent narrative that brings all these pieces together is the history of race relations and multiculturalism in the US and, more generally, the post-Cold War world.

The significance of this election to the history of race relations within the US is obvious from the fact there has never been a non-white president. But it is more than a mere mention in history textbooks that is at stake on Tuesday: an Obama victory would mark the culmination of a historical process and the beginning of a new era in race relations all across the Western hemisphere. It all began with the arrival of slaves from Africa and has continued intermittently with Asian, European and Latin American migratory waves. In West Europe the immigration is more recent and from Africa and the Middle East mainly. All the same, the last century or two have witnessed a remix of races that can only be compared to the barbarian migration to Rome back in the V century. That story did not end well as the Romans eventually abandoned the city and the Empire fell as a result. In the present case the prognosis is much better since the newcomers have integrated into the host societies—in fact, so much so that the next president of the most powerful one could be a newcomer.

Speaking more practically, race relations will most likely undergo a transformation as a result of this presidential campaign. While the non-white had traditionally been left out of the circuits of power, this has inevitably affected the interaction among individuals of different races and ethnicities. Having darker skin will no longer be a sign of powerlessness—whether or not one is willing to act upon this assumption. When going out to the street on Wednesday and seeing a black person we will have to contemplate the possibility that he or she could be a future president of the US. This slight change in our perception of one another can change American society for good and for the better.

Keeping the pressure on: what now for the anti-bailout activists? by Ornaith O'Dowd, NYC

2008-10-27T20:59:00.004-04:00

There is, I fear, a sense of bewilderment abroad among working people now that the bailout has passed and as the economic crisis deepens. What coherent counter-narratives are available for those who are beginning to lose faith in the standard ones provided by capitalist politicians and media? What possibilities exist for radical grass-roots economic justice movements in the current context? What, exactly, should we be demanding?
In my last essay, I argued that the best response to those who defended the bailout on the grounds that it was necessary to prevent disaster on Wall Street that would inevitably hit jobs, pensions, and so on was to broaden the question and ask why it is that we have a system that places so much power in the hands of investors. Why should we have pensions depend on the stock market, and why should the moods of investors have such significance?
If we are to find a just and rational way out of this crisis, or rather a way to recover from it, a thorough and profound debate about these questions is essential. Sadly, only a small minority of non-mainstream, that is non-corporate, media outlets have moved beyond reporting the dizzying swings of the Dow or FTSE and, on occasion, giving a superficial account of the controversy over the bailout.
It has been heartening to see so many working people take to the streets in protest at the bailout. Many of the protests have been organized by small, ad-hoc groups and have been publicized through grass-roots networks. I'm reminded of Hannah Arendt's claim that revolutions are carried out not by established "revolutionary" parties or organizations, but by spontaneously-constituted groups of people who, quite simply, have had enough of the system (note, not just the particular rulers) in place. I wonder, however, whether these protests will lose steam as the immediate, relatively concrete issue of the $700 billion bailout fades somewhat from the headlines and generalized economic crisis takes its place. The answer depends on the kinds of analysis available to the protesters and their supporters (and potential supporters).
One obvious thing to do in seeking the understand the prospects for such a movement is to look at the last economic crisis of this scale: the Great Depression. It was the spontaneous, grassroots-led, radical struggle of workers during that period that gave them their greatest gains and caused the greatest alarm in the capitalist class. The consolidation of the "mainstream" labor unions-- the AFL and CIO-- and their co-operation with the new National Labor Relations Board came as something of a relief to big business, since it offered the prospect of industrial "peace" and stability after the militant strikes of the 1930s. We should bear in mind, though, that these workers lived in a culture where worker struggles were always fresh in the community's memory, and where many writers and groups openly advocated various forms of socialism. They would have remembered Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party, who ran for President several times, finally in 1920, winning 900,000 votes. Debs himself had first been radicalized during the long Depression that followed the economic crisis of 1893. Radical movements-- of workers, the unemployed, veterans-- were brutally repressed time and time again and yet, their spirit survived and was taken up by new activists. System-saving reform and the outbreak of the Second World War blunted their edge, but it was really McCarthyism that did what mere beatings, killings, and imprisonments could not: it demonized them and made their own natural constituency hostile to them. (Needless to say, Stalinism's perversion of socialism/ communism helped this process greatly.) Even the tumult of the 1960s did not seriously revive this tradition.
What now, then? For the first time in many years, we can see the possibility of a great moment of clarity: the system's true nature and the interests of the different groups within it are becoming visible to a great many people for the first time. The bailout has shown that those in power in this system-- the capitalist class, including CEOs and Senators-- will do whatever it takes to save capitalists, and little or nothing to save anyone else, when there is trouble. It's not necessarily that the individual CEOs and Senators are cruel or greedy, although many are; it is not about personal qualities of individuals at all. It's about the dynamics of the system. It's simple: their interests are not your interests. If you're stranded on a New Orleans rooftop, bankrupted by medical costs, or facing foreclosure, you will not be bailed out; if you own an investment bank that has run into trouble, you will. That's just how it works. The appropriate demand, I think, is not just the rollback of the bailout and a New Deal re-enactment; the system-- capitalism-- that makes it "necessary" to bail out the bankers, not the workers, should itself be replaced by a system that organizes its priorities differently. As I suggested in my last post, this requires us to think about what economies are for: profit or people?
In short, the situation requires a radical anticapitalist movement with a radical anticapitalist analysis showing what is wrong with the system as a whole and how we can do better. For this reason, it is perhaps better that the anti-bailout and anti-eviction activism we are seeing is not led by "mainstream" groups such as the less radical unions. However, it is hard to create such movements and analyses in a vaccuum. Existing unions, political parties, and other organizations face a decision: will they step into the street or stay in their office suites?

The Return of the Welfare State--but for whom? by Graham Parsons, NYC

2008-10-20T06:00:00.001-04:00

For nearly 30 years now the US economy, and by extension much of the global economy, has been guided by a philosophy known in most countries as neoliberalism. Neoliberalism holds that all government interventions in capitalist economies are bad and that all social solidarities, especially labor unions, which thwart the interests of capitalist production are to be smashed up. According to the neoliberal picture, once a free-wheeling capitalist market has been established, the best thing government can do is leave it alone.

Neoliberalism departed significantly from what was the dominant political-economic order in the US in middle of the twentieth century. Beginning in the late 30’s and continuing through the mid 70’s, the US developed a system known as welfare state capitalism. Unlike neoliberalism, welfare state capitalism grants an important role for government in economics. According to welfare state ideals, growth and prosperity can occur and be shared widely by taxing the rich heavily and redistributing their wealth to middle class and poor households with subsidies and welfare programs as well as spending on massive public works. Government during this period also encouraged and protected labor unions, seeing them as an important buffer between the interests of big business and the interests of working people.

The election of Reagan in 1980 signaled the end of the welfare state system. The neoliberal turn Reagan ushered in led to the systematic dismantling of the welfare state. It began three consecutive decades of deregulation of the economy, successive waves of tax cuts predominately for the rich, spending cuts especially on social welfare programs, and the systematic attack on organized labor in this country. Importantly, the popularity of neoliberalism has not been confined to Republicans; large numbers of elected Democrats have abandoned the welfare state.

As for the Bush administration, it is hard to imagine a more dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal administration than it. As an illustrative example, when Bush spoke of bringing “freedom” to Iraq, he meant more than just ending Baathist tyranny. He meant turning Iraq into a neoliberal dream world. For him, clearly, neoliberalism has been the only way to go.

What, then, are we to make of the seeming betrayal of neoliberalism congress and the white house has committed with the recent bailout of the banking system? On its face, the bailout is a classic example of a welfare state program, and a big one at that. A massive nationalization of parts of a frozen, long underregulated banking system in order avoid the complete collapse of the free market sounds like a rejection of neoliberalism and a return of the welfare state. Is it?

Not at all, if you ask the Bush administration. According to them, the bailout is simply a momentary, regrettable violation of neoliberal ideals in order to avoid utter catastrophe. Once the banking system is back on its feet, the government will remove its grip on it and the capitalist order can be unleashed once again. This view is shared by John McCain and much of the Republican establishment.

But hold on. Why would we want a state that allows capitalism to run wild and then, when it collapses, intervenes to rescue it? Why would we want a welfare state for capitalism itself?

To answer this, we need to consider the supposed virtues of neoliberalism. Two things are typically said in defense of neoliberalism: prosperity and freedom.

Prosperity is said to be the consequence of an unregulated market. This is true, but only for a small portion of people. The last 30 years of neoliberal practice have decidedly debunked the idea that, by itself, capitalism will enrich all or even a wide swath of a community. Average Americans have seen their incomes gradually fall while the rich have gotten richer. In order to keep up, Americans have been forced to work longer hours for less pay and have accumulated massive amounts of debt.

(Graphs reprinted from The Wealth Inequality Reader edited by Dollars and Sense and United for a Fair Economy.)

Well, if not prosperity, then at least freedom from oppressive “big government” is what we have under neoliberalism, right? Wrong. The economic inequality brought about by neoliberalism undermines the freedom it purports to offer. Contrary to its self-image, a neoliberal order is a very oppressive place. The economy is controlled by the very few rich citizens who own the bulk of economic assets. These elites decide how the economy will operate which, in turn, determines the sort of life the rest of us will lead. They decide who will work, how they will work and how much they will be paid. Their power also permeates the state. The state in a neoliberal society is largely the tool of the rich and is used to serve their class interests.

This brings us back to the bailout. If the bailout is as the Republicans conceive it, then it is a tacit admission of the co-optation of the state by the economic elite. On the right’s view of the bailout, the state is only to intervene in the economy in order to rescue a system that only benefits the rich to begin with. It is simply the state acting to protect the class interests of the rich. The bailout, on this picture, is not the end of neoliberalism, but an expansion of it.

Is there anything left for a neoliberal to say in defense of system like this?

Fortunately, it doesn’t look like the neoliberal agenda has much pull with American’s anymore. Many now see the neoliberal economy exactly how it is described above. This explains the rapid decline of McCain’s popularity in recent weeks and the rise of Obama’s. With Bush, McCain’s solution to the present crisis is to give investment banks billions of dollars and then let everything return to neoliberal business as usual. By insisting on massive cuts in government spending including an across-the-board federal spending freeze, McCain even appears to think that the way out of the crisis is to push harder for neoliberal reforms. I couldn’t dream of a more reckless policy. Less government spending will worsen the recession, quite possibly precipitating a full blown depression, by taking more capital out of the economy. As is a basic premise of the bailout proposal, more government spending is the only way to stop the downturn.

Obama, on the other hand, is on a Democratic presidential ticket that, for the first time in a long time, is offering an explicit rejection of neoliberalism and a return to the classic welfare state capitalist system. He proclaims that the present economic crisis is “a final verdict” on “an economic philosophy that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else.” He proposes to rescue the economy by taxing the rich, redistributing wealth to the lower classes through subsidies and welfare programs, massive government expenditure on the nation’s infrastructure, and improved regulation of the financial industry. This would be a welfare state for the people, not for the rich. It is a fairly sensible way forward and it offers a more free and prosperous future than does a McCain presidency. Indeed, given his proposal to cut spending, a McCain victory is too dangerous to allow.

Unlike neoliberalism, welfare state capitalism is not an unmitigated disaster. Though there are many problems for such a system and I favor an even more assertive role for government in economics on the model of a social democratic or a socialist system, there is much to say in favor of welfare statism. It is the system that ended the great depression and led to the most extended, widespread period of prosperity in American history. Compare income growth by class during the welfare state era to that of the neoliberal era.

Though there is a long way to go, an Obama victory might be one step toward reclaiming public control of the economy.

Change is in the Air by Matias Bulnes, NYC

2008-10-15T00:46:00.010-04:00

The situation of the US seems to be as precarious as it has ever been: An unprecedented debt, a looming economic crisis of unbeknown consequences, an unmanageable war, the threat of terrorism lurking, China’s power increasing persistently and, let’s not forget, all this in the midst of a fierce struggle over interpretations of fundamental constitutional principles sparked by the Guantanamo Base prison and the wiretapping of citizens. And when one hits rock-bottom consolation comes from the realization that things can hardly go worse. But this is not to say that things are going to get better. For the US economy can go a long time before it recovers—as it happened after the Great Depression. And in fact, it may never totally recover, as some fear that China might relegate the US to a secondary role sooner rather than latter. The challenge of the day is to get out of the hole as fast as possible and, perhaps more importantly in the long-run, to get out of the course of events that led the country down this hole. The country needs change—and desperately so.

There can hardly be any doubt that the main responsible for the present state of affairs is the Republican Party in general, and the Bush administration in particular. Clinton handed the country to Bush with surplus after a decade of economic prosperity, no major military conflict, in fairly good terms with its European allies, and with the Israel-Palestine conflict having come as close to a solution as it has ever been. The Republican administration will likely return the country in the aforementioned deplorable conditions—may they not have another period to devastate it more.

Not even external, unforeseeable circumstances such as the terrorist attacks of 9/11 can account for the magnitude of the disaster. There are plenty of fingers one can point to decisions that straightforwardly explain much of the problems. Economists from within and without the country had been warning for years of the risks involved in such a ruthless deregulation of the US financial market. Or as many have observed, it is just naïve to believe that a housing market that always goes up might not turn out to be a bubble. Or in foreign policy, even now nobody understands why go into Iraq in order to hunt down someone who is hiding in Afghanistan and, moreover, in a way that undermines international institutions and threatens one’s allies. The list goes on and on.

All of this is familiar territory. But more significant than the usual declamations about Bush’s mistakes is the ideology that has driven him through such unfortunate decisions. For as one would have expected, all the mistakes hang together nicely in a way that reveals American conservativism in the background. The deregulation of the markets is the battle flag of the conservative right, while preemptive war has been advocated by the religious right and the neoconservatives. These two policies account for a good deal of the present distress, both of them courtesy of American conservativism.

The association between the present crisis and the conservative views that have dominated US politics over the last decades is clear in theory. The question is whether it’ll be as clear to the voter’s mind. And I think we can be optimistic about change in the political direction of the country to the same extent that we should be pessimistic about the current situation and the near future. For the American electorate has proved to be more sensitive to shock therapy than to ideological reasons, and crises, when severe, are felt by everyone around both sharply and helplessly. If the crisis is as bad as experts predict, voters will look around for people to put the blame on and eventually find conservatives and the Free-market gurus.

In fact, this path has been traveled before. The Great Depression, lately used to inspire fear of the present crisis, also marked a point of inflection in US politics. After decades of Republican domination the Great Depression ushered in more than 30 years of Democratic control of the White House only interrupted by Eisenhower. In fact, that was the last time Democrats won back to back elections. And then you have Marx all over again: if you want people to change prick them on their pocket.

Democrats brought Keynesian ideas to the table putting thus an end to that old-school Capitalism advocated by Republicans which had led the country to the economic crisis. A smoother form of Capitalism ruled the US for a few decades while Conservatives regrouped around Milton Friedman’s ideas. With the Cold War a new era of Conservative dominance kicked off. Arguably an era that goes on until today.

Neoliberals would probably want to view the historical progression in a different light. They would rather say that the American electorate always falls back to their ideology because in the long-run it pays off. That is, even with the crises the sparkling dynamism created by deregulated markets is the key to the US economic success and its political supremacy in the modern world. But this view does not seem historically accurate as the US has experienced enormous prosperity in times of Democratic presidencies. And more importantly, it is not clear that the electorate should place such a tremendous importance on growth at the expense of economic stability. In the light of the current distress, it may well turn out to be more rational to settle for a moderate though sustained growth while avoiding such traumatic episodes as economic crises.

The analogy with the Great Depression is no more than an imperfect comparison. But it is one that exemplifies the underlying forces that produce significant change in the political landscape. While crises are always regrettable due to their devastating human consequences, they also urge revision of political institution and policies. In short, crises oftentimes ensue reorganization and change. It is my hope that the American electorate will react to this wake-up call and will finally opt for a more friendly form of Capitalism.

What's behind the bailout? by Ornaith O'Dowd, NYC

2008-10-06T20:00:00.008-04:00

The passage of the bailout in Congress has, thus far, failed to calm the markets: the Dow fell below 10,000 today, and world markets followed a similar pattern, as investors worried that global recession was inevitable. The bailout, even if it works (whatever that means, since there are no clear criteria to measure its success), will not prevent the intensification of this economic crisis. What now?
I have heard comparisons between the bailout and the passage of the PATRIOT Act in the aftermath of 9/11, when sinister forces on the right used fear and panic to rush through a long list of extreme measures. The PATRIOT Act ushered in an era of Constitution-wrecking, torture, war, and repression. What era is being ushered in by the bailout?
As Naomi Klein has been pointing out recently, it is a mistake to think that the current upheavals signal any kind of collapse of capitalism. I do think that the contradictions, dangers, and injustices of the capitalist system have been laid bare in a remarkable way, but I share Klein's view that the (economic) right is preparing to profit-- in more than one way-- from the crisis.
First, the bailout will, as far as possible, protect the interests of the capitalist class, insulating them from the worst consequences of their ventures. As an indication of how the scheme will be run, note that Paulson has appointed another former Goldman Sachs executive, Neal Kashkari, to administer the $700 billion extravaganza. The bailout's provisions on executive pay are full of loopholes; in any case, it's largely a sideshow to distract the public's attention from the structural injustices of the system. They will weather the storm; working people, as usual, will pay.
Second, unless radical change occurs in Washington, for which I don't advise holding your breath, the bailout may have more sinister effects: it may be used to justify spending cuts that will hurt the poorest; it will do nothing to prevent, and may even encourage, the present consolidation in the banking system, leaving a handful of banks dominating the market; it may serve as a prelude to further anti-worker, pro-capitalist measures, all under the guise of meltdown prevention.
What will we be asked to agree to next, on pain of precipitating economic collapse? I want to say a little about this move, because I think it is enormously significant. Discussions about the bailout often run roughly as follows:
"I don't think working people should bail out these Wall Street fat cats who gambled and lost. Let them deal with it."
"But if you let them deal with it, the system will collapse, credit will freeze up completely-- with dire consequences for small-business owners and consumers as well as the fat cats, there will be a stock market collapse-- there goes your retirement, and there will be a disastrous depression."
There are two ways to respond here. The first is to posit alternative models of government intervention; for example, Sen. Bernie Sanders' proposal to fund the bailout by imposing extra taxes on the rich, or the various "trickle-up" proposals involving help for homeowners facing foreclosure, healthcare reform (which will help those struggling with medical debt, a major cause of inability to meet mortgage payments), and public works to provide employment and thus stimulate the (real) economy.
The second, much less discussed, is to look at underlying structures. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the dire threats described above are credible: must we acquiesce and admit the necessity of whatever the bankers and the markets demand? Well, only if we accept a system that allows their demands to determine so much. Why should people's retirement plans depend on a clique of speculators? Why should we need to borrow money to get an education or have a home? Why should the health of an economy be measured by stock market numbers and not by the meeting of human needs? If these sound like naive questions, we should ask why. Even in the midst of a deep crisis, few are pausing to look at the underlying ideas that have caused it. It's not just deregulation, it's capitalism itself; it's the conventional understanding of the concept of "economics" or "economies". What is economic activity for? What is economic success? The conventional wisdom is that such things involve measures such as GNP, stock market indexes, and corporate profits. But why accept this "wisdom" without question? It hasn't worked-- at least not for us, for working people. It tells us, when times are "good" (i.e. rising profits for corporations, rising costs for working people), that the country cannot afford to give us health care or decent public education, and it tells us, when times are bad, that the country cannot afford to give us health care or decent public education-- and by the way, can we give some of our money to the poor folks on Wall Street? Any system that dispenses such wisdom should be considered deeply suspect.
This is a time for urgent and deep reflection, for radicalism in the true sense of the word. If we are not ready with our arguments and analysis, the pro-capitalists will dominate the discussion at a time when, one might say, the mask is slipping and people are getting a real sense of the brutal unfairness of the system. Are we ready?

Victory in Afghanistan? by Graham Parsons, NYC

2008-09-29T10:32:00.008-04:00

I am used to hearing conservatives say that victory is achievable in the ‘war on terror’ and anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or a coward. This “victory,” I take it, is supposed to denote a very clear and decisive martial act. “Victory” is simply the destruction of the enemy. Like a blood-spattered Mel Gibson on the battlefield in “Braveheart,” in our “victory” we will stand amidst the bodies of our vanquished foes and pronounce the end of the war with a triumphant, collective holler.

John McCain likes to suggest that the “surge” is moving us toward victory in Iraq. It is supremely frustrating that he is able to get away with this. According to nearly all accounts (even McCain’s when he bothers to elaborate), the reduction of violence in Iraq is primarily the result of negotiations with the enemy. Sunni insurgents have been simply turned into government security forces. The bad guys were not slaughtered by our superior firepower and bravery. Rather, they were simply given legal recognition. “Victory” seems an odd description here. “Temporary negotiated settlement” might be better.

In any case, “victory” is the picture we are often given of the goal of our policy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the “victory” talk is not just confined to conservatives. Both John McCain and Barack Obama agree that the focus of American military efforts in the ‘war on terror’ needs to shift to Afghanistan and the growing Taliban-led insurgency there. They seem to disagree only on the scheduling of this shift and the tactics (or are they strategies?) to be used against the bad guys. Neither of the candidates, however, shrink from asserting that a bold, vigorous military confrontation with the Taliban is called for. “Victory” is what we seek in Afghanistan.

But, is more military pressure on the insurgents in Afghanistan going to bring about a resolution to the conflict there? I don’t think so. On the contrary, it will only make a resolution less likely.

In her essay, “On Violence,” Hannah Arendt draws an important and useful distinction between power and violence. Violence, for Arendt, is simply an instrument. It is used only as a means to an end. It relies on specific tools which technological achievements make more effective.

Power, on the other hand, is a form of collective action. People engaged in collective projects and guided by a notion of the good that they share and identify with have power. Power relies on shared understandings, cooperation, and willing sacrifice on the part of those that constitute it. It is only something that organized and relatively cohesive communities have. Nations, tribes, labor unions, etc. have power in as much as they collectively participate in group projects of their own.

Rather than conflating violence with power, as those who see sovereign power as consisting solely in a monopoly on violence do, Arendt sees the two as, in a way, inconsistent. Power cannot rest only on the ability to violently coerce obedience from its subjects. Indeed, the reliance on violence to exert power typically undermines it. The communal structures and shared understandings that power consists in are destroyed by violence. Simply put, people tend not to engage in cooperative activities with groups or institutions that attempt to violently force them to. Power needs its subject’s active cooperation in order to exert itself. The mere violent extraction of cooperation is not and can never be power.

It is for this reason that power, not the mere employment of violence by an elite minority, is what is necessary for a stable, legitimate political order. No state, no matter how spectacularly violent, can be strong and secure without power.

How might this distinction apply to American aggression in Afghanistan? Well, first the US cannot claim to have power in the region simply by virtue of its military capacities. American actions are not dependent on the cooperative acts of any Afghan community in the way that power is constituted. Americans may be able to enlist the power of local groups, but it cannot itself be a center of power. For the most part, Americans can only exercise violence.

Second, whatever loci of power exist in Afghanistan cannot be fundamentally changed by American violence. Short of the utter destruction of communities, violence can merely limit power. It cannot radically alter power and it certainly cannot create fundamentally new power.

Thus, if the Taliban have power in the region or are dependent on the power of others for their protection, then the US is going to be unable to eliminate them. Unless, that is, the US is willing to literally destroy those centers of power, destroying, that is, those very communities.

Frankly, it looks as though the Taliban have significant power. In fact, their power has only increased in recent years. Following their route at the hands of the US-led forces in 2002, Taliban fighters fled to southern Afghanistan and across the border into Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Northwest Frontier Province. Since then they appear to have increased their integration into the local communities. As Pashtuns, the Taliban’s ethnic affinities to these communities have always been strong. But in recent years, Taliban leaders have been able to take the place of tribal leaders. To the reporters who visit the region, the level of the Taliban’s integration is striking.

Worse still, the power of the Taliban seems to stretch far beyond the Pashtun tribes. The Taliban also rely on the support of significant sections of the Pakistani military. For decades now, Pakistan has worked hard to cultivate Islamic extremist movements in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the 1980’s, the US supported this effort with money, arms and intelligence. After the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan, the US withdrew its support and its concern for the extremists. Pakistan, however, did not. For Pakistan, the Taliban have been a way to maintain Pakistani influence over Afghanistan and, simultaneously, to minimize Indian influence. Islamic fighters in general, have also been used by Pakistan in Kashmir to counteract Indian influence. It has also been suggested that the massive aid the US has given to Pakistan in the ‘war on terror’ has given the Pakistani military a financial interest in maintaining the strength of the Taliban—if the Taliban were to disappear, so would the billions of dollars in US arms. Lastly, Pakistan’s support for the Taliban is guided by a section of the Pakistani military which adheres to an Islamic fundamentalist vision similar to that of the Taliban’s.

(On the current situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan see here and here)

It is difficult for Western liberals to accept, but fundamentally illiberal movements such as the Taliban can be embedded in real communities, supported by social organizations that operate around shared understandings and relying on thoroughgoing social cooperation by its members. Not everyone is guided by a supposed universal standard of reason to seek a liberal democratic political order. Despite the Taliban’s rigid laws and its severe punishments of transgressors, the cooperation of local communities they receive need not be merely a consequence of violent coercion. In Arendt’s terms, even groups as seemingly horrendous as the Taliban can have real power. Indeed, looking around the world, we see many Islamic fundamentalist groups in addition to the Taliban with significant and growing power.

American violence is not capable of changing this. We can send all the troops we want against them and we will not create an anti-Taliban, pro-western center of power in Afghanistan.

In fact, the opposite is likely to occur. When power is attacked by foreign agents it is able to provoke the loyalty of its community as well as that of other local communities more loosely connected to it. These loyalties will cause locals to rally around the threatened center of power, thereby increasing its power. Violence against power is not only ineffective, it is counterproductive. I would argue that American aggression is part of the explanation of the increasing power of the Taliban. The more we attack, the more enemies we create.

America's Disingenuous Political System by Matias Bulnes, NYC

2008-09-16T19:21:00.012-04:00

I have yet to hear an explanation of Ms. Palin's potential contribution as vice president of the US (and, let us not forget, possible president). All I hear is “women will vote for her,” “she is a hockey mother,” “it’s a smart move given the Democratic primaries,” etc. If we focus on her political credentials, the picture is rather unflattering. She has some political experience at the middle administrative level and none at the high level. Her academic training is far from impressive and she acquired her first passport a few months ago. As a result, she seems to be notoriously unprepared on international politics and diplomacy. Why would anyone think that she can be a good vice president? Except for a few million voters I suspect that nobody thinks she would be a good vice president. In fact, I should suspect that not even republicans believe so, on pain of disrespecting their political acumen.

But despite my suspicion the media has mostly welcomed Palin’s nomination (fortunately with some exceptions). Everybody seems to be celebrating the cleverness of the McCain campaign in making this move. And yet I can’t help the feeling that there is something deeply wrong with decisions like this. In this article I will explore what possible justification can ground a decision that by all informed standards jeopardizes the future of the country. I want to pay special attention to the insincerity of decisions such as McCain’s where the politician who makes them knows that they won’t benefit the country. I do not intend to mount a critique of the Republican Party in particular since I believe democrats acquiesce in the same logic—though perhaps with some more scruples. Ultimately I want to invite reflection on what kind of democracy can be built upon such a disingenuous political system and whether it is worth having.

Rightly or wrongly, making political decisions on purely instrumental grounds is widely condoned in the American media and, derivatively, by American society. It is, for example, assumed that politicians care more about winning elections than about principles such as authenticity or sincerity. Journalists and political analysts would not talk about the “real motive” underlying a political move ever so lightly if it wasn’t routinely accepted by the audience that politicians are usually insincere about their real motives. But as much as authenticity and sincerity are normally considered values, the obsession with winning elections has been justified in the liberal tradition in terms of a consumer-based conception of the political system (sometimes also called interest-group politics). According to this view, voters are consumers and political parties are suppliers of political projects designed to fit their preferences. As a consequence, the real motives of politicians are irrelevant; what matters is that their projects satisfy the consumers, hence that they win elections. This view of the political system relies on the hope that by pursuing politics in this market-like way the best optimum will be achieved—and moreover, in a way that doesn’t required a debate about the good.

But I doubt that McCain’s decision (as many others from all parties) can be justified in terms of this consumer-based model. For it would be analogous in an economic market to the case of a supplier selling a defective product to a costumer that he knows wants it out of ignorance or confusion. McCain should know perfectly well that Ms. Palin is hardly qualified for the US presidency in times of an unmanageable war, a looming economic crisis, an empowering China, etc. But instead of warning American voters of their crucial mistake he is happy to use it in his own benefit. Even raging liberals should agree that there is something deeply problematic about economic relations with such a crucial disparity in information.

One way in which the liberal could reply is by setting the responsibility on the Obama campaign to overlook McCain’s decisions and expose their flaws to the public light. Hence, should McCain’s choice of Palin be ultimately harmful to the US, the political system will react to it and eventually punish McCain with a defeat. But like with so many liberal arguments, their faith in the control power of the market is based on an ideal of social organization that is rarely instantiated in reality. In practice, this blind faith has earned the US 8 years of an erratic political leadership that has brought a previously healthy country to a state of tremendous economic and political uncertainty. But more important for the purposes of this essay is the observation that the political agents themselves know that the consumer-based model is at best a rough approximation to reality and bet on its imperfections. There can be little doubt that if the McCain campaign did after all choose Palin for instrumental reasons, they were aware of her profound political deficiencies and banked on the fact that the Obama campaign will not be able to turn the public attention to them in the short time before the general election. Not only doesn’t the political system guarantee an optimum outcome of the democratic process but politicians exploit the naïve expectation that it will.

The alternative to the liberal conception of political systems is unsurprisingly the social democratic one. The contrast between these views is usually brought out in terms of two opposite conceptions of political freedom introduced by Isaiah Berlin. But McCain’s decision can also make for a good illustration of the contrast. I suspect McCain chose Palin knowing that to be an overall bad decision for the country but based on public acclaim. This could be deemed acceptable only if we see the job of the politician as being the representation of the people’s preferences. But in the social democratic conception, rather than the people’s preferences, the job of the politician is to represent the people’s interest. In particular, making a political decision that goes against the interest of the nation but that has public approval is a violation of the duty of the politician. This together with the inevitable feeling that McCain is patronizing the people of the US, is perhaps what explains my discomfort with the choice of Palin. A democracy where politicians carry themselves in such a disingenuous way and voters are treated like means to seize political power sounds to me like a sham or, in any case, like a democracy not worth having.

Personal responsibility and systemic problems, part 2 by Ornaith O'Dowd, NYC

2008-09-08T15:01:00.006-04:00

This is part two of a two-post sequence. The first, below, was published earlier this summer, and focused on class, race, and gentrification.

Related questions of personal responsibility arise in connection with environmental issues. Many urbanites are becoming more conscious of their impact on the environment and various changes in lifestyle that can reduce it. Many are making efforts to reduce their carbon footprint and generally consume less; they are growing their own food in private or community gardens and urban farms, or are shopping at farmer's markets, food co-ops, or joining a local CSA (community supported agriculture); they are switching to organic, non-toxic or less toxic, and/or energy efficient products. For example, I spent some of this weekend researching recipes for making cleaning products from vinegar, lemon juice, olive oil, and baking soda, and look forward to making the switch from bleaches and artificial chemical sprays; gradually my partner and I are switching to CFL lightbulbs; we now buy electricity from renewable sources. It's not enough, of course: we still contribute too much C02, too much toxic waste. Is it a matter of personal moral responsibility? Am I personally responsible for the effects of water pollution caused by the detergent I used in my laundry yesterday? I cannot deny that I put the detergent in the machine, and that detergent made its way to a river and a sea, where it is going to harm the environment. I know this, and I could have paid extra for a less polluting brand instead of buying a bottle of wine for Sunday dinner. But I didn't.

A Marxist friend chides me for this sort of talk: it's not about you. It's the system. Blaming yourself and thinking you can change things by buying "green" or even getting involved in a CSA or urban agriculture is merely a distraction from the overall task, which is to replace capitalism. Go ahead and do these things if it makes you feel good, but don't think you are thereby fulfilling a moral responsibility. If you want to really do something, get involved in revolutionary politics focused on changing the entire system.

I find myself in sympathy with both sides to some extent here. I share the Marxist view that the overall task is to replace capitalism. Capitalism is-- among other things!-- inherently unsustainable and destructive from an ecological standpoint. Merely becoming a 'green' consumer will not change the overall dynamic: it is constant growth of consumption and production for profit that is the problem. We simply cannot have a model of economic success that is based on "growth" rather than human need. What is more, capitalism distributes environmental burdens unfairly: the poorest people and the poorest countries suffer disproportionately from the effects of global warming and pollution. Wealth and privilege can, to a large extent, allow you to buy your way out of these risks (of course, things will likely reach a point where even this is not possible). Inequality produced by capitalism also means that being a 'green' consumer is a luxury. Of course, we could always just consume less, but how realistic an option is it for most working people in the US, for example, to head off to a mountain somewhere and live "off-grid"-- off the consumer society grid as well as the electricity grid? I'm not packing my suitcase just yet: I love the city, the movies, the cheap seats at the Met opera, the art, the food. If we stay on the grid, so to speak, it can be very expensive to 'consume green', and where it is cheap, it usually involves more time (either time spent researching alternatives, or time implementing the change).

In a previous Intervention, I wrote about food justice issues both globally and locally in New York City. Many people and groups have responded to the problem of unequal access to healthy food by engaging in urban farming or community gardening, by shopping at farmer's markets, or buying a share in a CSA scheme. These initiatives offer alternatives to our current, dysfunctional, TNC-mediated relationship with food. Is getting involved with these alternatives just a matter of making ourselves feel good personally, or do they at least offer the potential of being genuine responses to the problems just described, and therefore a potentially morally and politically significant kind of action? The orthodox Marxist-Leninist will say: "Join the Communist Party and organize with them to try to eliminate capitalism. There's no other game in town if you are serious about social change". I agree, as I've said above, with the aim of replacing capitalism (with some sort of libertarian socialism or anarcho-communism, if you're asking-- I'm open on models just as long as there's no wage labor, and no repression). But I disagree that Being In The Party and fighting the big, abstract fight of eliminating capitalism is the only way of doing revolutionary anticapitalist politics. Depending on how it's done, urban farming and the like can be just as much part of the struggle, as well as being genuinely valuable and morally recommendable in itself. How?

First, urban farming (for example) provides a space for conversations that would not otherwise happen; simply talking with fellow activists or urban farmers about the reasons they have become involved and the insights they have gleaned from it may be an exercise in consciousness raising (for all concerned). For some, getting involved in this sort of concrete activity may raise a lot of good questions about the broader social context. Food justice is not a discrete problem; the more one learns about it, the more one realizes that it is related to a host of other issues, with capitalism-- among other things-- underlying all of them.

Second, urban farming is one way of creating a detailed vision of how the future could be. It is all very well to talk vaguely about how great life would be without capitalism and other forms of oppression and domination. It is quite another to spell out how people could work together without it, successfully providing for the needs of their families and communities. A well-run community garden or urban farm might raise the eminently reasonable question: "Why couldn't more areas of activity be organized like this?" In the US especially, we are so used to hearing that it's not realistic to expect people to work together for common goals. It can be powerful to see an everyday, real-life, ground-level example of people doing just that.

Third, urban farming is one among many fronts of struggle against the status quo. That 'status quo' has many elements-- capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, environmental destruction, militarism, the security state, imperialism, etc.-- so it makes sense that the struggle against it should be just as multifaceted. The danger, of course, is that single issue campaigns will focus on solving their problem through compromise with elites-- for example, 'business unionism', mainstream liberal feminism, HRC and other gay rights groups who seem more interested in cultivating corporate partners than in making common cause with all oppressed people. There is no easy way out of this problem, to be sure; what seems important is what kind of analysis we bring to our various activities. In this sense, it's all about making connections.

Repressive measures at the RNC

2008-09-03T08:00:00.004-04:00

Another RNC, another dismaying tale of repression on the streets. You wouldn't know it to look at the mainstream media coverage of the conventions, but there is a major crackdown on free expression happening in St. Paul (as there was to a somewhat less dramatic extent in Denver). Journalists have been assaulted and arrested for doing their jobs; activist groups planning peaceful protests or engaged in monitoring police behavior at those protests have been subjected to preemptive raids and detentions. Police have used pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, and concussion grenades on demonstrators.
You would think that all of this would be front page news; it would be if it happened pretty much anywhere else (or, at any rate, in Bad Countries We Don't Like), and yet, of course, it is hardly mentioned in the mainstream corporate media.
When a journalist as well-known as Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, is arrested for doing her job, we should be particularly alarmed. It's the sort of thing that police states do to show everyone that they can silence whomever they want. This might have its intended effect, which is to discourage dissent and make people frightened, but it might also alert people to the seriousness of the threat to our civil liberties and prompt them to take action. I fervently hope it's the latter.

Taking a break

2008-08-01T22:01:00.002-04:00

Interventions will be on hiatus until September 1st. Come back and see us then!

Is There a War on Terrorism? by Graham Parsons, NYC

2008-07-20T18:01:00.010-04:00

Here are three dogmas that are regularly offered by proponents of America’s global ‘war on terror’ as key elements of both its nature and justification.

First, terrorism is absolutely evil. No matter who is practicing it, terrorism is always the ultimate act of depravity. There is no room for even a qualified condemnation of terrorism. The sole task of the moral critic of terrorism is to denounce it. As Ariel Sharon said a few years back, “terrorism is terrorism is terrorism anywhere in the world.”

Second, terrorism is ultimately incomprehensible. It is a fundamentally irrational act that only lunatics engage in. There is nothing that can explain it, such as social or historical circumstances, in a way that makes it understandable. Indeed, for some, even looking for such an understanding is to violate the first dogma. Terrorists, as such, are simply maniacs, nothing more. As Paul Berman put it, terrorism is an “irrationalist cult of death.”

Third, terrorism is essentially connected with a particular kind of absolutist ideology, usually termed Islamo-fascism. Terrorists are crazed Islamic fundamentalists who want to kill all non-believers and form a theocratic society governed by strict Islamic law. The growth of terrorist acts in recent decades is a result of the burgeoning of this worldview.

Taken together, these claims form the bedrock of the hardline reaction to terrorism that is the ‘war on terror.’

The fact is, however, that the set of policies that compose the ‘war on terror’ are not consistent with any of these dogmas. Proponents of the war on terror, in other words, are hypocrites. Despite their high moral rhetoric, they have no problem ignoring, excusing, justifying or, worse, participating in terrorism of their own, including supporting so-called Islamo-fascists.

Of course, saying this is not new. The United States participated in terrorist campaigns throughout the Cold War and armed and trained many Islamic fundamentalists who are today’s Islamo-fascists. During that time, many on the left were eager to offer their well-documented condemnation of these policies. After September 11th, however, many leftists (or former leftists) have thought that something fundamental changed about US foreign policy. Christopher Hitchens is the most obvious example. Now, their thinking seems to be, the US has a really threatening, vicious enemy in Islamo-fascism and we should take seriously the moral character of the war on terror, a war to eliminate evil lunatics hell-bent on destroying civilization.

The rest of the left, myself included, remained suspicious. Though shocked by the viciousness of 9/11, we sensed that the ‘war on terror’ was a shell game intended to mask the true aims of US foreign policy, namely, imperial expansion and police work. Just as the war against the ‘evil empire’ was cynically used to justify repugnant acts during the Cold War, many of which had nothing to do with Soviet aggression, the ‘war on terror’ could be used to justify horrors that had nothing to do with ending terrorism (as was clearly the case with the war on Iraq). We saw, also, how the rhetorical underpinnings of the ‘war on terror’ served to bury the more complicated and reasonable motives of our terrorist enemies. Many terrorists are quite explicitly retaliating against the imperial injustices that have been brought upon them and their people by the US and its allies. The dogmas of the ‘war on terror’ obscure this and block an accurate understanding of the conflict we are actually in.

Unfortunately, our arguments haven’t had much effect. The grip of the ‘war on terror’ is tight and many still believe that the fight it ostensibly refers to is real and morally serious.

But now, approaching seven years since 9/11, we are back to square one. The US is once again practicing terrorism and supporting militant Islamic fundamentalists. Unlike during the Cold War, however, this time it is happening under the cover of a campaign supposedly to end terrorism and eliminate militant Islamic fundamentalists. The contradictions in the ‘war on terror’ have finally reached a breaking point. We can now see clearly the man behind the curtain.

According to a recent report by the intrepid journalist Seymour Hersh, the United States has embarked on a massive covert military campaign aimed at overthrowing the government of Iran. With a budget of perhaps 400 million dollars, the operations seek to destabilize the regime by, among other things, fostering violent anti-regime forces within Iran. According to his sources, the groups benefiting from the operation have been waging a bloody campaign against the Iranian regime, including bombings, kidnappings and assassinations. Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress as well as the ranking members of both the House and Senate intelligence committees were briefed on the plan and agreed to fund it near the end of 2007.

What should be obvious to any even-handed observer is that the tactics currently being employed against Iran include terrorism. Though I cannot offer a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that something must meet to qualify as terrorism—I do not believe there is such a set—it seems that if anything is terrorism, these acts are. Most of the generic traits of terrorism are present: a campaign of bombing and killing by guerrilla armies against a state intended to intimidate a broader public for political purposes. We do not shy away from calling such things terrorism in other cases. It is even likely that some of the violence is being targeted against non-combatants. (Though it is impossible to know if the US had a role in the attack, Hersh reports that earlier this year a bomb was detonated in a cultural center in the city of Shiraz, killing twelve and injuring hundreds.) At least one of the groups reportedly receiving support from the US is even on the State Department’s own list of terrorist organizations. As it has been at many times in its history, the US is once again a state sponsor of terrorism. So much for dogma number one.

Should any proponent of the ‘war on terror’ wish to defend this terrorist campaign or even argue that it isn’t really as bad as the terrorism of our enemies, they contradict dogma number two. If our terrorism is comprehensible, then we shouldn’t assume that our enemy’s terrorism isn’t.

Worse still, the groups in Iran we are supporting are not just practitioners of terrorism, they are motivated by the very Islamo-fascism we are told the ‘war on terror’ is supposed to smash. As Hersh reports, there are three groups that are said to be beneficiaries of US support that adhere to radical ideologies—Baluchi elements, the Jundallah or the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement, and the Mujahideen-e-Khalq or M.E.K.

“The Baluchi’s,” former CIA officer and author Robert Baer told Hersh, “are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda.…These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers—in this case, it’s Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen eighties.” Hersh goes on to remind us that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the supposed mastermind of 9/11, and Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for participating in the 1993 WTC bombing, are both Baluchis.

The Jundallah is similar to the Baluchis. Vali Nasr, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the widely acclaimed book, “The Shia Revival,” told Hersh, “This [the Jundallah] is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists….They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture.”

The M.E.K. is a group in exile in Iraq that many describe as a religious cult.

And there goes dogma number three. The ‘war on terror’, it turns out, is allied with Islamo-fascists and other ideological fanatics.

Given all this, there is no war on terrorism after all. The ‘war on terror’ is not a war against terrorism; it is a war of terrorism using terrorists.

So what is a sincere critic of terrorism to do? One option is to stick with the principles that are supposed to guide the ‘war on terror’ and condemn absolutely both sides of the conflict instead of just one. But, if anything has been made clear by this discussion, it is that the rhetoric of the ‘war on terror’ is far too shallow. It is not enough to offer moral condemnation of all acts of terrorism. We need to develop a critique of terrorism that can also countenance the real and complex reasons for the practice. The fact is that there are different kinds of terrorism, some of which might even be reasonable. Generally speaking, terrorism is comprehensible and the reasons terrorists have for it can be better or worse. An adequate method for assessing political violence will allow for such nuance. In the end, I believe it will turn out that our terrorism, not theirs, is the worst kind.

Is Education the Solution to All the Evils? by Matias Bulnes, NYC

2008-07-08T04:20:00.009-04:00

Education is the footing for a better society. So at least goes the cliché. And though clichés lack originality by definition, some are nonetheless true. This one, in particular, seems to me to be one of those. So many of the evils of modern society seem to stem from our chronic ignorance of each other’s motives and concerns, ignorance of what society consists in, ignorance of what we are, ignorance of other countries and cultures, ignorance of this, ignorance of that. If ignorance is, as it seems, the root of all evils, then the remedy is education. Economists usually recommend poor countries to strongly invest in education as the best means to strive. At the more local level, people oftentimes blame it on education when faulting somebody for some bad. So if everybody knows what the problem is, and moreover their diagnosis seems plausible, why are so many people uneducated? Why the evils go on? Why don’t we perfect the Enlightenment’s project and educate the whole world—or, to be a bit more modest, the whole US?

Maybe the problem is that Capitalism needs uneducated people. This is reminiscent of conspiracy theories mounted by leftist adolescents who imagine some Machiavellian businessmen complotting against the whole world. However, setting aside the conspiracy part, it may well be true that the market is like an orchestra and in such an organized setting not everybody can play the piano; someone has to hit the drum. And, of course, the problem is that drummers need not be so educated, nor would a mere drum satisfy them if they were. True, education works as a virtuous circle: education ensues innovation, innovation ensues technology and the need for more educated people. But even innovators have to eat and somebody has to take care of at least food production. So there will always be a need for uneducated labor in a Capitalist society.

However, in all fairness this isn’t a problem for Capitalist societies only, for even under a Socialist model some drummers would be needed. Even if, as in a Socialist model, the rewards for labor are not proportional to the sophistication of the job, some people will have to do the unsophisticated work that doesn’t require too much formal education. It seems as though education inevitably has to be distributed unequally no matter which model one prefers. So again, what does it mean to say that education is “the solution”?

There are at least 3 types of answer for this question. The first one is that education is the solution to the extent that it can be carried out given the constrains imposed by the market. Since poor countries have not come near developing their “market potential,” education is what they need to take advantage of the existing technology and thus defeat poverty. In countries with a more comfortable economy, more education may not do any good for they may have exhausted their potential. So, according to this line, education is not “the solution” but rather a solution depending on the country.

Even though I don’t think this is all people mean when they demand better education, I find myself moved by the premises of this view. This is perhaps due to my teaching experience. It is not so rare that I have students whom, in the light of their work, do not seem prepared or even suited for the challenges of college (see this magnificent anonymous article for interesting discussion). This feeling is unpleasant in extreme, and perhaps even remorseful, but anyone who has taught students like these will most likely arrive at the conclusion that high-level education is not for everyone, whatever other utopias are true. Sad as it is, not everybody can play the piano. This much seems out of question.

A second type of answer is that education is “the solution” in certain sense of the term “education.” Not technical but moral education is what we need to solve our problems—so the line goes. And in fact this is probably closer to what most people mean when they explain others’ misbehaviors by their lack of education. The idea is that quite aside from whatever formal knowledge people may have, moral knowledge is what accounts for their moral defects. As a result of this view, moral knowledge is independent of other knowledge one may have about the world. This seems reasonable to me in so far as moral knowledge is understood as knowledge about moral norms independently of their justification. When justification is needed, moral knowledge becomes pervasive and, I believe, continuous with other knowledge. Whether or not I’m right about this latter point, it seems plausible that people learn most moral norms as dogmas, without the justification attached to them. Hence the explanation that somebody’s misbehavior is due to lack of moral knowledge makes sense since it points to the fact that the person in question was not educated into, or in any case, did not learn (if only in the Skinnerian sense of stimulus/response), the moral rules. The only problem is that “moral rules” here has to be understood as a conventional set of norms people take to encompass the right but not the right itself. But life is short, let alone this post, so let’s put this to the side.

The third type of answer recasts the problem for which education is the solution as a political rather than moral problem. Education isn’t so much the solution to all the evils of society as it is a necessary condition for a society to be just. However, this view usually stresses justice as an extremely important political value and failure to attain it as one important source of political evil. The idea is most notably inherent in Rawls’ work, more specifically, in his Difference Principle. Setting aside technical details, the idea is roughly that a just society must guarantee its members that they will be able to attain whatever position in society their natural assets permit regardless of the social class in which they were born, their race, accent, or other consideration irrelevant from the moral point of view—to use Rawls’ own expression. This is known in everyday jargon as “equality of opportunities.” A society can only guarantee its members equality of opportunities if it provides them with high-quality education. According to this line, we need education not to solve all the evils of society but to solve one in particular which is extremely important: social injustice.

This is, I think, the best way of making sense of the value of education and the importance people in the ivory tower as well as in the street place on it. This view also accounts for the remorseful feeling we professors have on occasion that some of our students are just not cut out for college. Everybody should have the right to develop her natural talents; but of course not everybody’s talents are equal. Hence, only some people should receive high-level education. What’s important is that who does or doesn’t, does not depend on their social class, race, accent, or other considerations irrelevant from the moral point of view. And this much we haven’t achieved nor are we any close to achieving.

Let me finish with a bold contention: achieving equality of opportunities should result in dispensing with private education altogether. In effect, it seems plausible that it is a necessary condition for achieving this political ideal that the state levels public with private education, for otherwise economic power would determine one’s chances of developing one’s natural talents. But this in turn seems impossible for any time public education approaches the quality levels of private education, the private students or their parents will have incentives to toss in more money and lift the best teachers from public schools or else switch to public schools altogether. Or to put it more simply, if public and private education are equal, private education is pointless. The reason why private education exists at all is that it gives those who can afford it an advantage. This obviously conflicts with equality of opportunities, but oh well, those who can realize this are precisely the educated, hence, the same ones who take advantage of this defect of our society. No wonder they find it more convenient to look the other way.