Author: janinsanfran

Calling all Elderbloggers — let’s show the country that not all folks over 50 in the United States are ignorant nitwits opposed to health care reform. If you’ve got a blog, post your support for reform on Thursday, August 20.

Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By has put out a call:

Too many elders, who all have their own single-payer system that works quite well — Medicare — are being selfish in opposing reform for everyone else – I’ve got mine and screw you.

But unless meaningful health care happens, Medicare will need to be cut way back and then elders will be among the underinsured — or even uninsured — too. …

Health care reform is the most crucial element to economic recovery. If it does not happen, or if it is watered down too much to serve the corporate health care industries’ interests over people’s, only the rich will be able to afford health care. If that happens, I don’t want to have to say I sat back silently and watched it happen.

Polling suggests that too many of us are the skeptics whose unease with change creates the opening for the nut job tea baggers to do their raving.

Elders need to talk with elders about what reform means and why we need it. Write your post, visit Time Goes By and share your link. Can we get 100 posts, 200 posts…?

I’ll have mine up at Happening Here. How about you?

Promoted by Steven D

Last night the Human Rights Campaign Fund (HRC) held a fundraising dinner in San Francisco. Many local activists consider HRC a Washington Beltway outfit that rakes in liberal LGBT donations, but which betrayed part of its constituency last fall. HRC agreed then to exclude from proposed employment discrimination legislation (known as ENDA) protections for people whose gender presentation is not conventional. That is, HRC adopted the stance that it is fine to be gay — but just don’t be too queer. And certainly don’t expect legal protection if you are transgender or gender-transgressive.

For more on the controversy, see this article by San Francisco Pride at Work, an LGBT labor organization.

Greatly to the credit of most San Francisco LGBT activists and even the city’s progressive political establishment, civil rights for only some of the community does not win a lot of local friends. And so the HRC dinner was greeted with a boycott and, outside the hotel, a “Left Out Party: A Genderful Gala.” The HRC’s original keynote speaker, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villagraigosa, withdrew on learning of the protest.

My friend Catherine Cusic, a 63 year old lesbian activist who is currently a vice-president of the Harvey Milk Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club, figured that some people attending the dinner might not know what the controversy was about. So she bought a ticket and attended the dinner. She describes what happened to her:

Around 7:00 I sat at table #72 (which was in the back row). My table had a few nice men who asked me what the issue was about ENDA. They really didn’t know.

I listened to [speaker] Diego Sanchez’s speech. During [HRC Executive Director]Joe Solomonese’s talk I left my seat and walked towards the tables in front of me with the intent of distributing printed materials. At this point 2-3 large men accosted me. I don’t remember their exact words but I quietly said that I had bought a ticket and had the right to be there. I began to place printed material on a table when I was grabbed roughly by at least 2 men (who I think were behind me). One of them put my right arm in an armlock behind my back and up and bent my right wrist with tremendous force.  I was also held by both arms  (with force enough around both upper arms that I had bruises within 20 minutes).

At some point I was knocked to the ground and dragged out of the dining area into the outer room where they lifted me to my feet but did not let go. I then said to them: “let me go, I will leave.” (We were walking to a stairwell). They did not let go and dragged me off my feet again and down the stairs to the exit on Post street.

I have huge bruises on my arms and a shoulder that feels like it was half pulled out of its socket.  Years ago I was thrown out of the St Francis by SFPD and they didn’t hurt me at all. These are a company of private goons hired by Human Rights Campaign to police their event.

Still in some shock from her treatment, Cusic is exploring whether private security guards can be charged with assault.

Cross posted at Happening Here.

This diary is in support of Steven D’s excellent “Some Questions for Our Democratic Leaders” — I posted it earlier this week at Happening Here before the discouraging MoveOn vote. It seems only more true four days on.

When Bush launched the Iraq invasion, it was common for war opponents to warn: “this is going to be Vietnam on steroids.” And it was, in the sense that, just like the Vietnamese, Iraqis didn’t take kindly to being occupied by huge foreigners, swathed in modern armor, unconstrained in their use of violence, who knew nothing of their history, religion, cultures or language.

Unlike the Vietnamese, the Iraqi resistance does not have a popular, widely legitimate, leadership. But the U.S. invasion has empowered various groups to fight and manipulate the occupier while concurrently taking aim at each other. The “Vietnam on steroids” metaphor had diminished currency as the Iraqi civil war took center stage.

Lately our rulers have revived the metaphor for their own purposes, not only in Bush’s absurd effort to pump up the “stab in the back” myth about our lost Indochina war, but also by trotting out an ambitious, television-savvy general to try to sell continued mayhem to a weary public.

What will happen in Iraq will happen.

The U.S. has lost that war and will eventually get out; the Iraqis will make us leave — here in the U.S., most of us see no point in getting more of our young people killed.

Democratic would-be Presidents can dither all they want. What do they mean by withdraw all “combat” troops? Any troops they leave in Iraq who aren’t “combat” troops will rapidly become dead bodies. All of this discussion is irrelevant — the Iraqis will eventually boot us out of their destroyed country.

Where it is important to look at the “Vietnam on steroids” metaphor today is on the home front. Wars, especially failed imperial wars, have consequences — this one, in addition to exposing the fragility of our economic system as the United States government goes further in hock to China to pay for it, is changing our political culture in ways reminiscent of Vietnam.

Because the Iraq invasion is so closely identified with a President who controlled both houses of Congress and whose legitimacy was quite fragile aside from posturing as a permanent “Commander in Chief,” disgust about the war has been a huge spur to Democratic Party activism. After all, it was the Republicans who gave us this mess — so in a two-party system, opponents naturally run over to build up the other guys.

Concurrently, since the mainstream media were complicit in the lies that got us into war and the internet was changing where some people meet and organize, the war spawned a lively Democratic netroots which became a major arena for expression of antiwar energy. So we’ve got Daily Kos and a plethora of other sites.

From the new Democratic netroots, a generation of people who hadn’t paid much prior attention to politics cut their teeth in Democratic campaigns, both losing (Dean, Lamont…) and winning (Congress 2006) and pinned their hopes on a Democratic ascendancy.

As they watch Democrats in Congress waffle on refusing to fund the war, they are learning bitterly what a previous generation of anti-Vietnam activists never had a choice about knowing because Vietnam was Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s war: Democratic party elites share with Republicans a confidence that the United States can and should rule the world. Listen to smart electoral wonk Chris Bowers at Open Left:

… if Democrats end up nominating a candidate who supports a substantial residual forces plan while thinking that candidate will actually withdraw virtually all troops in a short period of time, then basically our party will have been hoodwinked in a manner not unlike the way the war was first sold to the American public back in 2002 and 2003. While that will be incredibly depressing and infuriating, it also won’t be that much of a huge surprise. After all, most of the Democratic foreign policy elite behind the substantial residual forces plan actually helped sell the Iraq war before it began.

He also labels the Democratic presidential offerings “Hillary Edwama.”

At this moment, the phrase that “Iraq is Vietnam on steroids” applies all too easily to the developing alienation from electoral struggle among many of the most committed, competent and effective activists brought forward by this generation’s war. That is exactly what Vietnam did among a previous generation of activists. Get involved with Democrats? No way!

I’m not going to argue that playing in party politics is good for the soul. It is not. But I do know what happens when progressive activists walk away in disgust from this noxious arena. Activists from the Vietnam generation know — because many of us already did that. The result was that the Boomers now in office are not the people from the vigorous movements, the creative sectors, of that era’s popular struggles. Our generation’s pols are the cautious, the amoral, the careerists, the hustling ladder climbers. (Sound like any Clintons you know?)

If Democrats’ adoption of Bush’s war as their own proceeds on its current trajectory, many of the people who have created the progressive netroots will similarly walk away from oppositional political activity. “Did that; wasted our time.”

Since United States wealth and power are much less than they were a generation ago, leaving the field to the second raters will have harsh consequences for all of us, most especially all those who never got into the game at all, even into the relatively open netroots: the poor, the racially excluded, the very young.

Tom Engelhardt suggest it’s time for a new metaphor; we are now living in

…the Roman Empire on crack cocaine. …

As it happened, 40 years [after Vietnam], the planet had changed. American military power not only would fail (as in Vietnam) to conquer all before it, but the United States would no longer prove to be the preeminent force on the planet, just the last, lingering superpower in a contest that had ended in 1991. …

Whatever our country was in my 1950s childhood, Americans were still generally raised to believe that empire was a dreadful, un-American thing. We were, of course, already garrisoning the globe, but there was that other hideous empire, the Soviet one, to point to. Perhaps the urge for a republic, not an empire still lies hidden somewhere in the American psyche.

Let’s hope so, because one great task ahead for the American people will be to deconstruct whatever is left of our empire of stupidity and of this strange, militarized version of America we live in.

And Gary Kamiya speaks to the urgency of the moment, dismal as it seems:

We need to remember that every American who falls in Iraq is someone’s son or daughter. We need to commit ourselves to working with the Iraqis, whom we have so terribly wronged, and with the rest of the world to ensure that our departure will not cause Iraq’s people to suffer even more. We need to remember that war is not normal, that it is the worst thing in the world, to be undertaken only in extreme need. And we need to remember that a nation that does not rise up when arrogant and foolish leaders sacrifice its less privileged members is in danger of becoming a nation in name only.

This is no longer about Bush. This is about remaking America.

A couple of days ago, Barack Obama published an oped about his plans to “put pressure” on Iran.

From Obama’s website, here’s his rationale for “putting pressure”:

The decision to wage a misguided war in Iraq has substantially strengthened Iran, which now poses the greatest strategic challenge to U.S. interests in the Middle East in a generation. Iran supports violent groups and sectarian politics in Iraq, fuels terror and extremism across the Middle East and continues to make progress on its nuclear program in defiance of the international community. Meanwhile, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared that Israel must be “wiped off the map.”

It’s all Neo-Con bullshit.

1) “Iran supports violent groups in Iraq” — yeah, and the NYT reports this morning that the US is funneling money to Sunni tribal forces. Link. The Iranian’s good buddies got elected the GOVERNMENT in Iraq in elections we imposed; not surprising they help them. We’re just mucking around in the Iraqi civil war.

The only suggestion that Iran is arming anyone is coming from the same US military flacks who want us to believe “the surge is working.”

2) State Department reports consistently said Iran had pretty much got out of the terror business — until the Cheney Administration started cooking the facts. Familiar? Even now, the definition of “supporting terrorism” is that they help Shi’a movements in the region. You might too if you were a bunch of Baptists caught in a sea of hostile Roman Catholics. Sorry, just trying to use a little imagination.

Israelis, and U.S. Neo-Cons, think Iranian assistance to Hezbollah is terrorism. Many Lebanese, including many Christians, think Iranian aid to Hezbollah has helped Shi’a, long excluded as “inferiors” from the Lebanese polity, find a voice. Depends where you are sitting.

3. Mohamed ElBaradei of the United Nations says Iran is cooperating in showing that its nuclear development is peaceful. Remember ElBaradei? He’s the guy who insisted Iraq didn’t have WMD?
4. Ahmadinejad is a bombastic asshole. And what do we have for a President? No way the Iranian president can accomplish the destruction of Israel  — and some like Juan Cole have said that’s a mistranslation anyway.

Obama is playing the warmonger; on this point, he’s no better than the Neo-Cons.

Cross posted at Happening Here.

Everyone who gives a damn about the U.S Constitution is buzzing this week about Democratic legislators’ craven capitulation on the Bush administration’s new FISA law that has immunized invasions of our private communications by their “national security surveillance” spooks. Yes, that is what the law effectively does; see this. The Bushies yelped “terror, terror”; the Dems caved — again. Pissing on the people seems to come too easily to elected Dems. The more folks look at the debacle, the more comes out about the tactical blunders (or possible perfidy) of the Democratic leadership, especially Majority Leader Harry Reid in the Senate and Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the House.

As a long time Pelosi constituent, I’d like to explore the terrible possibility that this episode shows that my congresscritter has, in being elected Speaker, demonstrated the truth of the Peter Principle.

What’s the Peter Principle? Propounded by Laurence J. Peter in his 1968 book, this tidbit of pop sociological and business wisdom says:

“In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

Or her incompetence. Simply put, I think Pelosi has worked very hard to rise very far in an insiders’ system — and truly mastered the art of such an ascent. Unfortunately, the very skills and instincts honed on the way to becoming the first ever woman to be Speaker of the House make her unable to lead effectively on contentious issues.

Where’d Pelosi come from, anyway?
Pelosi’s official bio is strong on her family background.

Pelosi hails from a strong family tradition of public service. Her father, Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., served as Mayor of Baltimore for 12 years, after representing the city for five terms in Congress. Her brother, Thomas D’Alesandro III, also served as Mayor of Baltimore.

Pelosi graduated from Trinity College in Washington, D.C. in 1962. Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, a native of San Francisco, have five children: Nancy Corinne, Christine, Jacqueline, Paul and Alexandra, and six grandchildren.

But that doesn’t tell much about how she climbed the ladder to her current status.

That story requires going back quite a long time. From 1964 to 1983, the Congressional seat Pelosi now occupies was held by Phil Burton. Burton was a kind of liberal we don’t often see these days: a tough guy with principles. The National Park Service has put up a surprisingly good bio him as part of its site for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, one of his legacies:

Descriptions of Phil Burton reveal that he was a “good-doer” who had no patience for “do-gooders” who settled for glorious defeats. He loved to win, knew how to win, and expected to win.

Phil was a liberal in the truest sense of the word. He fought for workers’ rights, the underprivileged, farmers and coal miners, the aged, and the “little guy.” He knew how to forge coalitions of idealists and pragmatists, conservatives and liberals, amateurs and professionals. He was the consummate vote counter who always knew exactly where he stood and what it took to win.

Phil was the old-fashioned boss prowling the aisle, buttonholing colleagues in the cloakroom, hustling votes for his next worthy cause.

On the home front, in San Francisco, Burton built a political force usually referred to  as “the machine.” Up and down the ranks of officeholders, aspiring Democratic pols had to get right with Burton. And lots of the better people in San Francisco politics over the last forty years came out of that axis.

When Phil Burton died, in office, he had no trouble bequeathing his seat to his wife, Sala. The new Burton won two elections herself, but died two months into her second term. On her death bed, in 1987, she designated Nancy Pelosi as her successor.

San Francisco leftists by that time had come to feel that perhaps the Congressional seat wasn’t merely the property of a Burton to give away. Maybe the voters should have a say. As well, new forces were maturing in the city — in particular, gay folks were contesting for “liberal” leadership, often to the discomfort of the former Irish- and Italian-American elites. Harry Britt, a gay former Methodist minister and city Supervisor, became their standard bearer.

Pelosi was not well known to the Democratic electorate in the city. Her Democratic credentials were as a party fundraiser, a party insider — not a resume that gives a person a wide public following. We didn’t really know what she stood for.

The primary election triggered by Sala Burton’s death was one hell of a campaign. I remember it as the time when a generation of political consultants who come out of 1970s radicalism, often with the United Farm Workers Union, jumped to the side where the money was — Pelosi’s side. Meanwhile, a younger generation of budding progressive consultants and pols cut their teeth working for Britt. It is hard at this distance in time to understand what a radical thing it was to have a openly gay man running for Congress — one way to gauge it is to realize that two years later, in 1989, San Francisco defeated a domestic partnership referendum.

Pelosi barely squeaked through the primary, defeating Britt by a 36-32 percent margin. And ever since, she’s had clear electoral sailing. The only question in our biennial elections is whether a token leftist opposition candidate will out poll the token Republican sacrifice.

So who has Pelosi been in office?
She has voted as a pretty darn good liberal. According to Wikipedia, she has “a lifetime rating of 3 from the right-leaning American Conservative Union.” That’s just fine with her constituents. She’s mended any broken fences with the gay community and been a champion for women. She makes sure to stay friends with the Israel Lobby, despite voting against the Iraq war resolution — but all major Washington Dems have those ties.

The most memorable public actions I remember my congressperson taking have been condemnations of China’s human rights record. In 1991, she got into a fracas with Chinese police while trying to visit Tiananmen Square. Whether her activism on these issues has been a nod to hard-line anti-Communist Chinese-Americans in San Francisco, or signs of authentic commitment to human rights, these are the only occasions on which I remember her standing out from the generality of quietly liberal Dems. (Sara at Next Hurrah initiated a fascinating conversation about where Pelosi learned her values that might bear on this question.)

Closer to home, Pelosi has not always been a liberal force. She can be counted on to endorse status quo, business-friendly Dems against populist pols. She negotiated the conversion of the Presidio Army base into a “public-private partnership” that must pay its own way, instead its becoming a National Park — this particularly rankles as the site is in the middle of Phil Burton’s magnificent Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

But on balance, Pelosi hasn’t been a terrible Congressperson. Unlike that other San Francisco product, the execrably authoritarian Diane Feinstein, there have been years when this leftist could vote for her.

Ascent to the Speaker’s chair
It now seems clear that during all those years when Pelosi was an acceptable, if mostly invisible, Washington fixture, what she was really doing was climbing the internal Democratic Party House hierarchy. She accumulated seniority. She kept on raising money, tons of it, for Dems in need. She worked her colleagues. However she did it, she reassured many of them that she wasn’t some fire-breathing liberal they should fear.

And she rose up the ranks — ranks of what during her tenure was mostly a minority caucus, so some of these positions probably had less cachet than they might have if Democrats had been the majority. She served on the Appropriations and Intelligence committees, the latter as the ranking minority member. In 2001, she became Minority Whip, defeating Rep. Steny Hoyer; in 2002, she rose to Majority Leader of the battered, somewhat cowed, minority Democratic caucus. In both positions she was “first” woman.

And so, after the Democrats took a majority in the House in 2006, Pelosi became Speaker. She supported Rep. John Murtha for Majority Whip — but Murtha lost out to Rep. Steny Hoyer. Pelosi and Hoyer are the House Democratic leadership today.

Now that is clearly a tale of insider intrigue. Pelosi’s rise wasn’t a triumph of parliamentary proficiency (under the Republicans, no Democratic maneuvering was possible) or a mark of command on policy issues. Pelosi got to the top though some combination of cajoling, flattering, funding and soothing some 200 plus, mostly male, mostly egocentric, peers. And obviously, she learned and practiced the right mix of skills to do this very competently. It is no small accomplishment to become the first woman Speaker. She should be admired for it.

And the Peter Principle?
It doesn’t seem to me that the skills Pelosi has honed so well have much to do with leading a fractious, fearful caucus against an aggressive, vicious, authoritarian political enemy. Bush isn’t playing by insider rules — he lies and cheats and bulldozes his way through enemies. Frankly, I doubt that Pelosi is personally at all cowed by him; she had five brothers and she has proved she can face down male bullshit.

But her caucus is cowed. When I was part of a delegation to her San Francisco office in May, her aide pretty much admitted that Pelosi was concerned that some of her own members would rebel if she didn’t let a Bush-friendly Iraq funding bill come to the floor. As Speaker she could block it, but she wouldn’t because her own members would turn on her. That is, Pelosi’s status as Speaker is hostage to letting Bush get his way. And there we have the FISA collapse in a nutshell.

I fear Pelosi has risen to her “level of incompetence” — she excelled at becoming Speaker, but seems unable to be the Speaker. Bush (or Karl Rove, or Dick Cheney) is setting the House agenda and Pelosi doesn’t seem able to change this.

Cross posted at Happening Here.

Promoted by Steven D

Martin Scheinin, a Finnish professor of international law, holds the cumbersome title of “Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism” of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. From May 16-25, he visited the United States to “undertake a fact-finding exercise, and a legal assessment of United States law and practice in the fight against terrorism, measured against international law.”

On May 29, he issued some preliminary findings. I haven’t seen much of anything on the progressive blogs about his report, so I am going to quote extensively here. We need to know how we look to the rest of the world.

Scheinin tries to reassure that he is not hostile to legitimate U.S. concerns.

The Special Rapporteur is deeply mindful of the tragic events of 11 September 2001, as well as preceding acts of international terrorism against the United States, including the bombing of its Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He is also mindful of domestic acts of terrorism, including the Oklahoma City bombing….

In a world community which has adopted global measures to counter terrorism, the United States is a leader. This position carries with it a special responsibility also to take leadership in the protection of human rights while countering terrorism. The example of the United States will have its followers, in good and in bad.

But he finds many areas of concern.

Guantanamo
The persons detained at the United States military facility at Guantanamo Bay have been categorized by the United States as alien unlawful enemy combatants. It must be made clear that this is a description of convenience only, without legal effect, since there is no such third category of persons under international law. Those that participate in hostilities are either “combatants”, or “civilians” who have participated in hostilities and are thus subject to detention and prosecution.

In the case of those who have been captured during armed hostilities in an international or non-international armed conflict, but in respect of which there is no allegation of offending against the laws of war, such individuals should be released, or tried by civilian courts for their suspected other crimes. The Special Rapporteur considers that the detention of this group of persons for a period of several years without charge undermines the right of fair trial…

Military commissions
…the Special Rapporteur has serious concerns about the independence and impartiality of the commissions, their potential use to try civilians, and the lack of appearance of impartiality. Whereas military judges in courts martial are appointed from a panel of judges by lottery, judges in a military commission are selected for each trial by the convening authority of military commissions. Although the current convening authority is a civilian and former judge, she is employed by the Department of Defense….The ability of the convening authority to intervene in the conduct of trials before a military commission is also troubling. The plea agreement in the trial of David Hicks, for example, was negotiated between the convening authority and counsel for David Hicks, without any reference to the prosecuting trial counsel. The involvement of the executive in such matters is troubling.

The Special Rapporteur is concerned that, although evidence which has been obtained by torture is inadmissible, evidence obtained by other forms of coercion may, by determination of the military judge, be admitted into evidence…. The next problem is that the definition of torture for the purpose of proceedings before a military commission is restricted so that it does not catch all forms of coercion that amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, equally prohibited in non-derogable terms by Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Interrogation of suspects
As a result of an apparent internal leak from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the media in the United States learnt and published information about “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA in its interrogation of terrorist suspects and possibly other persons held because of their links with such suspects. Various sources have spoken of such techniques involving physical and psychological means of coercion, including stress positions, extreme temperature changes, sleep deprivation, and “waterboarding” (means by which an interrogated person is made to feel as if they are drowning). With reference to the well-established practice of bodies such as the Human Rights Committee and the Committee Against Torture, the Special Rapporteur concludes that these techniques involve conduct that amounts to a breach of the non-derogable right to be free from torture and any form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In a meeting with the Special Rapporteur, the Acting General Counsel for the CIA refused to engage in any meaningful interaction aimed at clarifying the means of compliance with international standards of methods of interrogation and accountability in respect of possible abuses.

Rendition
The Special Rapporteur refers to various sources pointing to the rendition by the CIA of terrorist suspects or other persons to “classified locations” (also known as places of secret detention) and/or to a territory in which the detained person may be subjected to indefinite detention and/or interrogation techniques that amount to a violation of the prohibition against torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment…. Rendition in the latter circumstances runs the risk of the detained person being made subject to torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. … due to the refusal of the Acting General Counsel for the CIA to engage in any meaningful interaction, and in light of corroborating evidence, the Special Rapporteur concludes that his visit supports the suspicion that the CIA has been involved in the extraordinary rendition of terrorism suspects and possibly other persons….

This isn’t all. He also looks at the threat to the very principle of the rule of law implicit in claims by the executive to a right to circumvent statutory limits, as for example by warrantless wiretapping in possible violation of the F.I.S.A. act.

It’s not a pretty picture.

Hat tip to the European site Madrid11 for pointing me to this report. Cross posted at Happening Here.

This morning I read that Iran and Turkey are shelling the part of U.S.-occupied Iraq where the Kurds live. Administration thugs like U.N. Ambassador John Bolton keep pressing for a U.S. war on Iran. The news is all wars and rumors of wars and Democrats are dithering.

This country desperately needs a more active citizen peace movement. If we are to have a chance to end the Administration’s policy of force and violence everywhere, if we think attacking Iran is not just a bad idea, but a recipe for disaster, aroused  people need to get out and organize for new policies, for peace. War Times/Tiempo de Guerras is one free tool to help activists build the demand for peace.

Lots of people STILL don’t participate in online forums like this one. We need to engage them in conversation and offer them credible reading material. A special print issue of War Times/Tiempo de Guerras newspaper will be available in September. This eight-page, bilingual newsprint tabloid was published from 2002-2004 to provide a free resource to anti-war individuals and groups to do outreach to folks who don’t get their information from forums like this. (Disclosure: I have been part of the War Times volunteer activist core since its founding.)
The paper went into semi-retirement in 2004 because we saw that a majority in the U.S. was coming to oppose the Iraq war — our peace energies could be better used elsewhere, including on the election that year. We did continue to maintain a web presence and write background flyers for free download. But we believed that the peace movement no longer needed a printed tabloid; the kinds of stories that early on after 9/11 were not covered, such as the Bush administration’s phony claims about Iraq’s WMDs, were now mainstream front page news.

But this summer, U.S. neo-conservatives, with far too much cooperation from Israel and forces everywhere which embrace military solutions to all problems, have pushed the world toward wider carnage. We now live amid constant speculation about a U.S. attack on Iran. The War Times folks thought making available an issue covering multiple threats would be a service to the U.S. peace movement. We’ve raised enough money (though we always need more) to print and ship a September paper.

Our editorial notice explained:

In the last few weeks, war, occupation, death and destruction have dangerously intensified in the Middle East. The U.S. government has encouraged Israel’s devastation of Lebanon and Gaza. Three thousand civilians are dying by violence each month in Iraq. Almost a million Iraqis are living as refugees in neighboring countries. The mainstream press offers its unquestioning approval of U.S. and Israeli moves, while condemning — or ignoring — the widespread opposition of the Arab world.

This one-sided news coverage reminds us of the early days of the U.S. “War on Terror” and of the buildup for the war in Iraq. In those times few media voices were raised to oppose the Bush Administration’s designs. We face a similar situation today….

We will of course make the issue contents available on our website and to our email list. But the printed version will allow organizers, teachers, activists, and all peace-loving people to provide the issue for free to their neighbors, colleagues, students, members, friends and families. We hope it will be a contribution to peace with justice in the Middle East.

Free papers in bulk are available for the asking from this address. For more information visit War Times/Tiempo de Guerras.

Promoted by Steven D, with minor edits.

After 10 days in Jordan and Syria meeting with residents of those countries, especially Iraqis, it is depressing, if not surprising, to return to a silly debate in the U. S. Congress about the “future” of the U.S. enterprise in the region.

“Democrats insisted that the war had cost too much and that the United States must begin pulling troops out, while Republicans equated any withdrawal with retreat.” NY Times, June 22, 2006.

NO ONE in the region thinks the “future” they are debating has any reality. Not “western observers” who needed to speak off the record; not the advocates of the possible such as the policy wonks of the International Crisis Group (ICG); not Syrians and Jordanians who live amid the backwash of the U.S. military adventure; and certainly not Iraqis, who have long ago concluded that the superpower is either mad or entirely bent on handing their country over to its enemies in Israel or Iran, if not on brutally exterminating them through encouraging criminal gangs while withholding essentials like electric power.

Joost Hiltermann is the Jordan-based Middle East project director for the ICG, an organization whose board of directors lists half the “wise old men” of Western international relations: figures like Zbigniew Brzezinski and retired General Wesley Clark lend their prestige to the group’s work. Hiltermann very generously spoke candidly with our Global Exchange tour group of U.S. peace activists. He is in the business of providing research to governments, not on what has gone wrong in the past, but on what policy options may exist for moving forward with the least violence and human suffering.

ICG was unable to reach internal agreement on whether the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was justifiable. However Hiltermann believes his personal prediction has proved true: the U.S. won the military conflict easily, but has lost the peace. He describes the current situation in Iraq as very fragile indeed, as likely to collapse into inter-communal violence and criminal anarchy as to lead to any kind of stable state.

The most fundamental problem with the U.S. “victory” was that its imported occupation administrators, led by Paul Bremer, acted as if Iraq could be ruled without considering the well being of its Sunni population. Though Sunnis are only 20 percent of Iraqis and are concentrated in regions without oil reserves, they also have provided many of the country’s vital technocrats, its secularists, and the years of Baath rule gave them an expectation of government influence. Yet U.S. occupation policy attempted to rule through dividing Iraqis along sectarian religious community lines. When Sunnis were simply excluded from influence in constitutional negotiations between some of the Shiites represented by the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution In Iraq (SCIRI) and Kurdish parties, an authentic, desperate Sunni insurgency mushroomed. The sectarian logic of occupation policy has created a low level civil war. “Full scale civil war could be much worse.”

Hiltermann says the U.S. belatedly realized its error last fall, pushed by international pressure, especially from the Saudis. Until an elected Iraqi government was finally formed two weeks ago, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalizhad was effectively running the country while trying to encourage constitutional revisions that would diffuse sectarian conflicts. ICG proposes three elements of a path out of the present instability:

• a national unity government representing all communities must be formed. The recently formed government is such an entity, though Hiltermann called it “not very legitimate” despite the electoral and negotiation process from which it arose.

• a thorough revision of the constitution that removes the divisive “federalism” inserted by Kurds and SCIRI-oriented Shiites that would exclude Sunnis from most oil revenues. Whether this can be accomplished will be the test for Iraqis and the U.S. occupation in the next period. Some Shiites, especially those led by the prime minister’s Dawa Party and by Moqtada Sadr are nationalists, not inclined to enshrine sectarianism in the basic law. These groups are not beholden to Iran, despite occasional U.S. suggestions to the contrary. However Kurds are not Iraqi nationalists. They have no intention of subjecting their territory to genuine national control; they further demand to control the oil rich city of Kirkuk. Hiltermann emphasized that his research supports the Arab Iraqi position that this demand is just an oil grab; Kurds cannot legitimately claim that Kirkuk was once a majority-Kurdish city. If constitutional negotiations fail, the Sunnis will withdraw from the government and an even more destructive insurgency/civil war will follow.

• after the constitution is rebalanced, then genuinely national Iraqi security forces can be created. The current ones are simply disguised militias; new ones, representing a legitimate, broadly supported government will be required to restore order and civil society. Persons occupying positions of power in the Iraqi government need a realistic, independent vetting by some legitimate judicial body that doesn’t currently exist. The country needs not only de-Baathification, but also an impartial review of crimes committed in the post-invasion civil strife.

If these measures fail, Iraq will dissolve in a fury of inter-communal violence far worse than anything seen yet, violence that might well spread to neighboring countries such as Jordan and Syria.

Hiltermann cannot not urge immediate U.S. withdrawal. A “precipitous” U.S. departure seems to him likely to make a bad situation even worse, akin to the U.S. ignoring Afghanistan and allowing it to fester after the Soviet Union pulled out in the late 1980s.

This was a line we heard as well from “responsible western observers” who cannot be quoted. Domestic U.S. political parties may be off in LaLaLand refighting the Munich crisis of 1938, but the policy wonks are obsessed with the Afghan experience.The U. S. dropped the ball there when it seemed to serve our interests and ended up with the Taliban. The wonks fear we’ll do this again. (As in fact, we apparently have… in Afghanistan.)

From our interviews however, this seems a Western point of view. Some Iraqis and other Arabs are afraid of what will happen when the U.S. withdraws, but they also see eventual U.S. departure as essential and inevitable. A Jordanian policy sophisticate who asked not to be named summarized what seems to be the regional concensus succinctly.

My solution may be brutal, but I believe the U.S. must leave completely. Iraq will have a difficult rebirth; it may take 10 or 15 years. But Iraq has enough heritage to recover, to stand on its own two feet. There is no other way.

Cross posted at Happening-Here along with several other accounts of meetings between Iraqis in Jordan and Syria with U.S. peace activists.

Iraq

Proposals for a US Withdrawal from Iraq

Middle East Politics

Peace Activists

Jordan

Syria

Last night I participated in a “progressive issues focus group,” designed to test market a pitch from the Latino-oriented voter registration group, Mi Familia Vota. They didn’t make the 10 of us who participated sign any kind of confidentiality agreement, so I am going to tell you all about it.
Participants in my group were all white, though one made a point of his “Hispanic” heritage, middle-aged or older, and ostensibly middle-class. I thought about half of us were gay (they wanted a San Francisco sample, after all.) Afterward, we speculated among ourselves that we had been selected from the mailing/email list of People for the American Way, the sponsor of Mi Familia Vota. They attracted us with a cash payment of $100 for 2 hours.

Warm up questions quickly established that we all identified as minimally “anti-Republicans” and mostly rather more progressive than that. Everyone had done something to try to elect Kerry, usually through the independent “Get Out the Vote” efforts. Many knew folks who had gone to other states to work. I guess we qualified as pretty committed “Bush-haters.” I will admit that I didn’t leap to explain what I do — things like political research and organizing to elect candidates — as I didn’t want to take up too much space.

Our ideas about why Democrats are not winning were not very original. Some pointed at the vast sums of money in politics, biased media, conservative think tanks, the religious right. One woman had a very sophisticated analysis of how smart people who vote Republican have to tell themselves lies. I was the only one who mentioned declining union membership and white racial anxieties, though folks nodded when I brought this up.

The researcher conducting the groups then showed us a PowerPoint presentation highlighting the increase in Democratic success in California since the big increase in Latino registration in 1995-96. (Here’s when I really muzzled myself, since I have done a lot of research on this for various employers.) People were blown away by a Perot-like presentation of some simple graphs that seemed to show that more Latino voters provided a path toward progressive victory. (They do, but the road will be long and hard getting there — and Democrats better realize they have pay attention to these newly empowered voters if they want to keep them.)

Apparently, Mi Familia Vota! is moving out of its Florida home and wants to develop a national donor base and win a broader progressive profile. Having been properly awed by the potential of the “Hispanic vote” (the leader’s language), we were shown a sample brochure (ho-hum, full of foundation-speak gobble-de-gook), a video (pretty good, though a little slow), and some positive newspaper article quotes (well chosen). We were asked if we might consider giving to the project. Eight of ten said “yes”; the “nos” said they gave elsewhere but liked the project.

They also asked us what method of solicitation we would respond best to — phone, snail mail or email. Phone bombed; email ruled. This is the part I hope they pay attention to; I love Delete.

*

Having been introduced to Mi Familia Vota! naturally I came home and did some quick internet research on the project. They seem to have done a competent job in Florida in 2004, claiming over 50,000 new Latino registrations and 80 percent turnout among them. Two items about their work really struck me:

• Their registration efforts were targeted on the basis of some pretty deep polling. The data gave them a useful profile of who the unregistered Latinos they were seeking might be: 81 percent preferred speaking Spanish over English; 65 percent made less than $40,000 a year, while 57 percent owned their own homes; 68 percent got their news from Spanish language TV; and 96 percent wanted to raise the minimum wage. Many times I’ve wanted as good data as this to work with instead of guessing at where to send registration volunteers. That Mi Familia Vota! had it in 2004 means they had smart start-up funding.

• They overcame efforts by the Department of Homeland Security to prevent them from registering new citizens at Miami swearing-in ceremonies. Having organized registration at those ceremonies in 1995-96 for Californians for Justice, I know what a struggle that can be with immigration bureaucrats and we didn’t have hostile Republicans running the show.

Mi Familia Vota! seems to be the real thing as non-partisan, non-profit registration outfits go and the progressive movement will benefit from their work.

Not surprisingly, I also have some reservations.

First, they are trying to go national. The polling data that supports their work points to one of the problems they face: the Latinos they seek to register are folks who live deep within their immigrant communities. The target population is likely to be most responsive to people who live in their area and share their world. The director of Mi Familia Vota!, Jorge Mursuli, seems to have strong ties in the Miami community, but will the group’s projects in other areas be able to claim the same indigenous credibility? Also, in many areas, it is not as if this group would be the only voter registration project; in particular, Southwest Voter Registration has been working to get Latinos into the electorate for many years, with mixed success. Are progressive non-profits duplicating their efforts again, as too many GOTV outfits did in 2004?

Secondly, Mi Familia Vota! is a non-profit. Non-partisan voter registration and civic education are perfectly legal activities for a 501(c) charitable organization; individuals and foundations can legally support them and get tax benefits. That is, there is money in the non-profit tit. But in politics, eventually the rubber hits the road and the project is winning. Progressives don’t actually want to register potential Republican voters, just as Republicans trawling fundamentalist churches aren’t looking for Democrats. A lot can be done under a non-profit umbrella, but too many progressives want to stay there, safely out of the furnace of competition. Part of why Democrats have been losing is that we have believed we could win simply by being in favor of good government, without fighting. Republicans have proved it isn’t so. Staying in the non-profit realm is a temptation to impotence for progressives. We aren’t going to win until we know we have to leave our “safe space,” at least some of the time.

Cross posted at Happening-Here

You can help pick the winners of a contest that will give California students scholarship money for college. Before 11am PDT, May 21, visit the contest page of the Campaign for College Opportunity. There you can read finalist essays by middle and high school kids and view the posters and TV ads they’ve created on the theme “Save a Spot for Me in College.” Take a look and cast your vote for the overall winners.

Do this and you’ll be participating in an innovative grassroots lobbying effort.
The Campaign for College Opportunity seeks to impress on state legislators the need to support community college education for all students who graduate from high school. The state master plan has called for such support for many years; the state’s higher education system has been much of the engine of California’s prosperity. But state government has been hamstrung by the refusal of Republicans to agree to any new tax measures, and consequently, community colleges have begun to crack under demand that exceeds the supply of places. They have raised fees, limited the availability of classes, and cannot provide the counselors who might help get students through the bureaucratic maze.

So the Campaign wanted to collect California students’ own thoughts and dreams about college to share them with legislators. What better way than a contest with real money prizes?

Last month I wrote about serving as a reader in the first phase of the contest. It was a fascinating experience. Hundreds of us helped winnow down 8000 entries.

Now the Campaign seeks our online votes which will be used alongside those of a panel of judges who include:

• Farai Chideya, author and correspondent for National Public Radio

• Don Hahn, Interim Head of Feature Animation at the Walt Disney Company

• Joe Kapp, former NFL star

• Josefa Salinas, radio personality for Hot 92 Jamz in Los Angeles

• Peter Schrag, columnist for the Sacramento Bee

• Mike Sklut, host of “High School Sports Focus” on Action 36 in the Bay Area

Reading these student essays, what came through so poignantly is that these young people, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants, want to be what they think of as “good people” — productive workers, supports to their parents, participants in their community. Read their own words at the contest page and help give them a leg up toward their dreams.