Left I on the News  

Did you know that debt collectors across the country mobilized en masse to support Scott Brown in the recent election? Why on earth did they do that? Let them tell it:

With the very real threat of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency looming in Congress, as well as wholesale changes to a health care system that would affect many credit and collection professionals' livelihoods, ACA members helped the Brown campaign create a groundswell to victory.

Changes in the health care system or more protection for consumers? Why, what kind of socialist are you? Don't you want people to go into debt (and, ultimately, go bankrupt) so that the debt collectors can have a job? The debt collectors do!

If there's one thing that repulses me about religious people, it's when they claim, as one can read and hear over and over today, that their "prayers were answered." In this case, it's the New Orleans Saints:

"The Saints are a team that travels with nuns and priests in their owner's entourage, and after years of horrible football and terrible tragedy in New Orleans, the city's prayers were answered at long last."

Really? Why weren't they answered last year? Or the year before that? Or anytime in the last 43 years? I mean come on, nuns and priests on your side praying for you and it takes 43 years before you win?

Claims like this are akin to rolling the dice 43 times, and when "snake eyes" finally turns up, claiming your "prayers were answered."

I don't know anything about football, other than that I read the Saints were the underdogs, but I'm 100% sure that their victory had nothing to do with prayer, and one heck of lot to do with the emotion and spirit that the players were imbued with by their association with that battered city. Plus talent and luck.

Why we need universal health care: Low-income women in at least 20 states are being turned away or put on long waiting lists for free breast cancer screenings, because we "can't afford it"...in a country that spends one trillion dollars a year on war.

Some of those women will die. "National security" means security for the profits of corporations, not for low-income women.

A fascinating article about the team behind all the Cuban doctors in Haiti, the people who set up and equip all the field hospitals. I'm pretty sure you won't be seeing Dr. Sanjay Gupta talking to them, so reading this article will be your only source.

A freelance reporter and critic of the Winter Olympics has been denied entry into Canada. The story has received coverage in the Canadian press, but, as far as I can tell, not a word in the American press. The latter has room for, for example, an extensive article in USA Today on security at the Olympics, and even a Reuters article on how the media has been temporarily banned from the snow-starved snowboard venue. But when a reporter is banned from even entering the country? Not a word. [By the way, I waited a day on this post, giving U.S. corporate media a chance to catch up with the story. Guess I didn't wait long enough. Like until hell freezes over.]

In other news of America's "democratic" allies, Israeli forces raided (and trashed) the West Bank offices of the non-violent "Stop the Wall" movement, "confiscating computer hard disks, laptops, and video cameras along with paper documents, CDs, and video cassettes," and also arrested two foreign members of the ISM. Not much point in waiting a day to see if this story appears in the Western corporate media.

Yesterday at the "Tea Party Convention," she declared that "America is ripe for another revolution" and that "Government is supposed to be working for the people."

No, that's it. You were expecting more?

This statement was issued by the ANSWER Coalition today:

We won’t sit by while the bankers and militarists plunder this country and send our loved ones to fight in a war for empire!

The outrage continues and gets worse.

When tens of thousands march in Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles on March 20 – we are going to tie together the issue of endless war and skyrocketing unemployment and poverty.

If we don’t act, no one will.

Consider these scandalous facts:

• Today, the Pentagon announced that tens of thousands of Marines are invading the southern provinces of Afghanistan in the next few days. General Barry McCaffrey predicts 300-500 killed and wounded each month in the next few months. The generals never bother talking about the loss of Afghan lives.
• Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Gates submitted the largest military budget in U.S. history. The $708 billion includes nearly $500 million each day for Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Hours later, the bankrupt insurance giant AIG announced that it was doling out $100 million more in bonuses. AIG exists because it received $180 billion in taxpayers’ bailout. The federal government received an 80 percent share in AIG, which means Obama’s Treasury Secretary Geithner agreed to these bonuses. AIG will give millions more bonuses in March.
• More than 25 million people are unemployed or seriously underemployed while the bankers, war contractors and other corporate crooks make record profits and record bonuses.
• Personal bankruptcies rose 32 percent in the past year as families lost their jobs, medical benefits and their homes.

Take to the streets. Tell every family and friend, co-worker and fellow student that it's time to get on the bus. It’s time for the people to speak out. It’s time to raise hell!

Join us on March 20 in the streets of Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles! Don't let the Tea Partiers be the only ones to own the streets of this country, and don't let columnists and others claim that the "left" or the "antiwar movement" is dead in this country. Speak out in favor of money for health care, education, jobs, housing, mass transit, and other human needs, not war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Health care, not warfare! Jobs and education, not war and occupation! Mass transit and homes, not bullets and bombs!

Join us!

"It's almost as if he's taking a bullet for everyone else."

- A "compensation consultant", commenting on the "modest" bonus of "only" $9 million dollars received by Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs. We're told by AP that such a "modest" bonus "appears aimed at quelling criticism of the bank's compensation practices."

Earlier this week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had this to say:

"As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of ­Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."

"Will be"? Will be? No, is.

Carly Fiorina, failed HP CEO, is catching massive flack for a laughably sophomoric attack ad on her opponent, Tom Campbell, featuring a "wolf in sheep's clothing" (what an original metaphor!) which looks more like a demon sheep than a wolf. But for my money, her ad doesn't compare to the inanity of the latest ad from her Gubernatorial counterpart, successful failed eBay CEO Meg Whitman.

In one sentence of the ad, Whitman says "The professional politicians have been fighting in Sacramento for years and the state is in the worst shape that I've seen in the thirty years that I have lived in California." Well, just for starters, as the San Jose Mercury News points out, Whitman has only lived in California for 23 years, not 30 years! But perhaps even more importantly, while she's railing against "professional politicians", has she noticed that California has been "led" for the past 6 1/2 years by an actor, not a professional politician? And is she aware that, thanks to the most stringent (and anti-democratic) term limits laws in the nation, the people in Sacramento who are "professionals" are the lobbyists, not the politicians who rotate in and out of office with regularity?

But that's not all. She goes on, "I have run large organizations, I know how to create jobs, I know how to focus, I know how to balance a budget and I think a business perspective is a bit of what California needs right now." "Creating jobs" is something we hear from a lot of politicians, but, for Meg's benefit, I need to point out that businesses create jobs for entirely different reasons than the state does. The only jobs the state creates, jobs like prison guards or highway patrolmen or Caltrans workers, cost money, they don't make money which is why and how you "create jobs" when you're a CEO. Furthermore, when you're a CEO, balancing a budget when times are tough generally involves laying off workers, which is diametrically opposed to the idea of "creating jobs."

Indeed, Whitman goes on in the ad to talk about "cutting government spending," and back in November, she was quite specific about cutting 40,000 government workers. So there's 40,000 jobs lost right off the bat. A "business perspective"? No, that's precisely what California (and the United States) does not need right now.

Could it be...good news?

The U.S. military has reprimanded an unusually large number of commanders for battlefield failures in Afghanistan in recent weeks.

Reprimanded for killing too many Afghan civilians? Dropping bombs without sufficient investigation of the targets?

Uh, no:

...reflecting a new push by the top brass to hold commanders responsible for major incidents in which troops are killed or wounded.

U.S. troops killed? Official reprimand which can "scuttle chances for promotion and end a career." Civilians killed? Tsk, tsk. If that. Indeed, this kind of reprimand only increases the chances that U.S. commanders will take even fewer chances with the lives of U.S. troops, which means even more Afghans are likely to be killed. I started to write "innocent Afghans," but as I've written before, that only gives credence to the idea that Afghans resisting the foreign occupation of their country are "guilty" and somehow deserving of death. They are not.

Supporters of Israel like to pretend it's not clear. Is this clear enough?

"Hamas supports the establishment of a Palestinian state with the 1967 borders."

- Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh

I am personally a supporter of a one-state solution, as I have written on many occasions, and believe that, particularly as the "facts on the ground" stand now, there is no other solution. However, even more than that, I support the right of Palestinians to negotiate (or fight for, as they choose) their own solution to the problem.

Remember the outcry when anti-abortion homophobe Rick Warren delivered the invocation at Obama's inauguration? Well, it's happened again. What's one of the big controversies in the news right now? Anti-abortion (and, for all I know, also homophobic) football star Tim Tebow is due to "star" in an anti-abortion ad to be aired during the Super Bowl. So where else do we find Tebow? Delivering the closing prayer at the National Prayer Breakfast, an event sponsored by the right-wing group known as "The Family", an event attended by (and addressed by) President Obama.

Cenk Uygur, a popular columnist on Huffington Post and elsewhere, wrote a column the other day on "How Bipartisanship Hurts the Country." What really annoyed me was this:

The reality is so-called bipartisanship is the worst possible thing for the American people.

Why do I say that? Is it because I'm a radical who believes the best solutions are always found at the extremes of the political spectrum? Nothing could be further from the truth; I think generally speaking you find clowns and madmen at the end of a political spectrum (see Glenn Beck).

This kind of false equivalence of the left and right (or the extreme left and the extreme right) is hardly unique to Uygur; I've heard it from Jon Stewart many times, and others as well. It annoys me every time.

Call me biased, because as an "extreme leftist" I have a dog in the hunt, but the idea that there are "clowns and madmen" on the left is simply false. There is plenty to criticize about socialists - they're impractical, don't believe in compromise, they "worship dictators" (a frequent criticism), "socialism doesn't work because people are greedy," whatever. But you will search high and low to find writing on the left which is not coherent, fact-based, and grounded in reality.

Compare that to the Daily Kos-commissioned poll of "self-identified Republicans" published two days ago. Not the views of real nutjobs like Glenn Beck, but "average Republicans" (although I'm sure many will argue they are all "real nutjobs"). What did that poll show? 63% think Barack Obama is a socialist! 42% believe he wasn't born in the United States, with another 22% "not sure." 21% think "ACORN stole the 2008 election," with another 55% "not sure."

Compare that to the left. There is a small (but vocal) "9-11 truth" movement, parts of which hew to perfectly reasonable views like "the government knows more than its telling" while others are, in my view, hold more untenable positions and might justifiably be viewed as "clowns and madmen." However, there is no part of the "organized left" which holds such views - not any of the parties (PSL, WW, CP, SP, SLP, SWP, RCP, etc.) nor any of the organizations (ANSWER, World Can't Wait, Code Pink, UfPJ, etc.). And of course many "9-11 truthers" are right-wing as well. A small number of people on the left (e.g., Alexander Cockburn at CounterPunch) don't accept the reality of the human causes of global climate change, but I don't believe there are any who deny the very reality of climate change.

Past issues like this we come to questions like "Hugo Chavez - 'dictator' or leading Venezuela in the right direction to improve the lives of the people?" "Fidel Castro - vicious dictator or the greatest political leader of the 20th century?" "Single-payer health care - 'government takeover' of health-care and the end of freedom as we know it leading to death panels for Grandma, or the only possible way to get good health care for everyone at the lowest possible cost?" You can have different positions on issues like these, but taking the second position in each case hardly makes you a "clown or a madman."

The truth is plain to anyone who cares to be objective about it. Left-wing websites (this one, Lenin's Tomb, PSLWeb, just to name a few popular ones) are filled with serious articles analyzing the events of the day. Right-wing TV shows and websites are filled with paranoia and utter nonsense. People like Uygur and Stewart employ false equivalence between the two so they can stay safely in the "middle," free from criticism from the "establishment." Both are welcome to disagree with the need for socialism, or the views of the left in general. Neither are welcome to equate such views with the utter lunacy of the right. You cannot possibly come up with anyone on the left who remotely compares to the likes of Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, et al.

P.S. - Note to "9-11 truthers" - please don't use the comments to refight this fight. We know where you stand. Nothing you say is going to change my opinion of you and, it seems, vice-versa.

In the last couple days the elimination of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has gone from one year to two years away. Hey, not so fast!

The United States should not rush into a change as large as repealing the ban on gays serving openly in the military without making sure the people it affects are on board, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday.

Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said an 11-month study into the effects of lifting the ban will examine practical questions such as how the change would affect the numbers of people who decide to remain in the service when their terms expire.

So if 10% of the military are vicious homophobes, all they have to do is to respond to the survey saying they'll quit the military if they let the gays in, and, poof, there go equal rights for gays and lesbians.

Today President Obama talked to Democratic Senators:

"If...we don't want to stir things up here, we're just going to do the same thing that was being done before, then I don't know what differentiates us from the other guys."

Bingo! But wait, it gets even better:

"We've got to be non-ideological about our approach to these things. We've got to make sure that our party understands that, like it or not, we have to have a financial system that is healthy and functioning, so we can't be demonizing every bank out there. We've got to be the party of business, small business and large business, because they produce jobs."

You'll search his answers in vain for even the claim (however bogus) that "Democrats have to be the party of the workers." It isn't there.

When I wrote "Don't Ask, Don't Tell...Don't Hurry" about the military taking one year to "study" how to "implement" a policy of not firing gays and lesbians, I didn't know the half of it. Literally::

The team...will have until the end of the year to finish its work.

Gates cautioned, however, that the military would move slowly and that it would need at least a year beyond that -- until 2012 -- to fully integrate a change.

Because, you know, it's just so difficult to just stop firing people. And by the way, note the "at least." It's kind of like the time table for getting troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

And while we're on the subject of inane, there's John McCain. Various people have called attention to his obvious flip-flop, claiming in the past he'd listen to the military and yesterday doing exactly the opposite. But I took more note of this statement:

"[This policy] has helped to balance a potentially disruptive tension between the desires of a minority and the broader interests of our all-volunteer force."

No, John, it's not the "desires" of a minority, it's the rights of a minority. And what "broader interests" are you talking about? The "right" of people to be bigots? Sorry, it's that that may be a "desire," but it's not a right.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu a few days ago on Israel's work in Haiti:

"You have raised human spirits and elevated the name of the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces. As many plot against us, distort and muddy our names, you have shown the real IDF."

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak:

"In a world where the IDF is criticized, you showed the true spirit of the IDF and the true spirit of Israel."

His homophonous counterpart, U.S. President Barack Obama:

"We do it because it’s right, but we also do it because when the United States sends the USS Vinson to Haiti to allow a bunch of helicopters to unload food and Marines or -- helping and we've got a hospital that's set up -- that sends a message of American power that is so important, because too often what other countries think of when they think of the United States and our military is just war.

"But when they see us devoting these resources and the incredible capacity that we have to help people in desperate need, that message ripples across the world. And it means that when you've got a guy like bin Laden out there screaming, "blow up America," it's a lot harder for that seed to take root when people have been seeing images of America making sure that people in desperate need are helped. So it's part of our national security. It's a smart thing to do."

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the idea that they are helping in Haiti to improve their public image has never once occurred to the leadership in Cuba, and if the thought has ever crossed their minds, they certainly haven't been crass enough to mention it. Only those feeling guilty about what they are actually doing elsewhere in the world would even think this is something to think about or mention.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified today that:

"I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. For me, it comes down to integrity – theirs as individuals and ours as an institution."

For starters, Mike, it's not all about you. We don't really care about you being "troubled"; the issue is equality before the law for a large group of people.

But that "being forced to lie" and not being able to have "integrity"? Apparently it's not that big a deal:

The comments...set the stage for the Defense Department's yearlong study into how the ban can be repealed without causing a major upheaval in the military.

A yearlong study! You know, we're not talking about having to convert men's barracks into co-ed barracks or something complicated. We're actually talking about people who are already in the military and just stopping kicking them out! Does that really require more than one minute's study, much less one year?

I'll be interested to hear if any of the Senators quizzing Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked the obvious question - if you and your boss (Obama) are so committed to this, why doesn't Obama just suspend this policy today?

Courtesy of Greg Grandin in The Nation:

And in Honduras, human rights organizations say palm planters have recruited forty members of Colombia's AUC as private security following the June overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya. That coup was at least partly driven by Zelaya's alliance with liberation-theologian priests and other environmental activists protesting mining and biofuel-induced deforestation. Just a month before his overthrow, Zelaya--in response to an investigation that charged Goldcorp, another Vancouver-based company, with contaminating Honduras's Siria Valley--introduced a law that would have required community approval before new mining concessions were granted; it also banned open-pit mines and the use of cyanide and mercury. That legislation died with his ouster. Zelaya also tried to break the dependent relationship whereby the region exports oil to US refineries only to buy back gasoline and diesel at monopolistic prices; he joined Petrocaribe--the alliance that provides cheap Venezuelan oil to member countries--and signed a competitive contract with Conoco Phillips. This move earned him the ire of Exxon and Chevron, which dominate Central America's fuel market. Since the controversial November 29 presidential elections, Honduras has largely fallen off the media's radar, even as the pace of repression has accelerated. Since the State Department's recognition of that vote, about ten opposition leaders have been executed--roughly half of the number killed in the previous five months.

In Iran, the execution of two men who were accused of being part of an armed group seeking to topple the state received extensive news coverage and the condemnation of the U.S. government. The execution of ten opposition leaders in Honduras? Not a word from the government or the corporate media.

More on repression in Honduras.

In the news we learn that the U.S. is sending Patriot anti-missile defense systems to Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait, to defend against the non-existent threat of Iranian missiles (not that the missiles don't exist, but that the only chance they will be used against those four countries is if one of them foolishly allows its territory to be used as a launching pad for an attack on Iran, which can be prevented simply by not doing it).

Interestingly enough, these aren't the only Patriot missiles in the news. Within the last week the U.S. has announced plans to place such weapons in Poland and also in Taiwan, to defend against more non-existent threats.

What's really being "defended" in all these instances isn't these countries at all, but the Raytheon Corporation, which coincidentally just announced a 20% profit increase and that's before any of the deals just announced. And these are no small deals! The sale to Taiwan is a $3.1 billion deal. In the case of Poland and the four Gulf States, the news is somewhat ambiguous about whether those countries will be paying for the missiles, or whether the U.S. government (i.e., the oh-so-generous U.S. taxpayers) will be placing the missiles in those countries at its (our) expense, but in either case, it's Raytheon where the money will end up.

Nor is this a new development; it's been going on for a while:

Over the past six months Washington has stepped up arms sales, notifying Congress of deals such as a $410m Patriot missile system upgrade for Kuwait, a $7.8bn Patriot deal with Turkey, and substantial sales to Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

Also:

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have bought more than $15 billion in American arms in the past two years, including missile defense systems.