Month: December 2007

Dana’s Other Little Secret

by digby

Many long time readers, know that I’ve been writing about California Representative Dana Rohrabacher’s ties to the Taliban (along with his pal Grover Norquist) for years and they may also remember this unsavory story, which I blogged about back in 2006. At the time, Rohrabacher’s former close associate was denying that he was a pervert and the entire Republican hierarchy was circling the wagons to protect him.

I guess they gave up:

Jeffrey Ray Nielsen—the well-connected Orange County conservative activist who claimed the so-called liberal media, specifically the Weekly, was out to get him by publishing a series of exposés on his pedophile activities—is expected to finally admit tomorrow that he used two boys for sex since 1994, according to law-enforcement sources.

A legal representative for Nielsen, who has extensive personal ties to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and Orange County Republican Party boss Scott Baugh, told prosecutors early last week that Nielsen would plead guilty to two felony counts: committing lewd acts on a child under 15 years old and committing lewd acts on a child under 14 years old.

In exchange, Nielsen, 37, is expected to receive a three-year prison sentence, which is mild considering he faced more than 30 years if convicted of all the sex-crime counts in two scheduled upcoming trials. He will also have to register as a sex offender for life.

Nielsen’s high-priced legal defense team of Paul S. Meyer and John Barnett had hoped to win Nielsen merely probation. A formal sentencing hearing isn’t expected until next year in Superior Court Judge David Thompson’s court; Nielsen is expected to be in court Wednesday to accept or reject the deal.

“Mr. Nielsen is pleading guilty and accepting responsibility for his actions,” said Susan Kang Schroeder, spokeswoman for District Attorney Tony Rackauckas. “We think this is vindication for the two victims. We’re very sorry for what they’ve been through.”

The son of former Fountain Valley Republican Mayor Ben Nielsen, Jeff Nielsen was brought to Washington, D.C., in 1994 by Rohrabacher as his aide. During this period, Nielsen befriended a seventh-grade Virginia boy he met as a church youth counselor. For three years, Nielsen engaged in sexual conduct with the boy (including in public), tried to convince the boy he was homosexual, and wrote a series of love letters to the boy after he moved back to California to enter USC law school, according to court records. Rohrabacher, who nowadays claims amnesia about his ties to Nielsen, wrote a glowing personal letter of recommendation for Nielsen’s admittance into the school.

Perhaps we need to start asking ourselves not only why so many conservative Republicans are perverts and hypocrites, but why they are so drawn to politics as a profession? I had always thought that a good number of the pedophiles who joined the priesthood did because they knew it was safe. Who would ever suspect the moralistic and sexually conservative church? Is it possible that perverts and hypocrites are joining Republican politics for the same reason?

H/T to Mr Murder

.

The Real Deal

by digby

Remember this?

TANCREDO: Well, I tell you, this has been wonderful. Senator McCain may not be happy with the spirit of this debate. For a guy who usually stands on the bookend here, aside, and just listens all the time, that’s kind of frustrating, you know, in other debates. I have to tell you, so far, it’s been wonderful.

(LAUGHTER)

Because all I’ve heard is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo. It is great. I am so happy to hear it. It is a wonderful thing. It’s a good message, yes. We want to secure the borders.

Here’s that “good” message:

Tom Tancredo has been running this immigration debate from the beginning and he’s finally getting down to the nitty gritty. Will the rest of the GOP tough guys roll with this?

.

Deep And Shallow

by digby

I’m looking forward to hearing Mitt Romney’s speech explaining why his being a Mormon shouldn’t preclude him from being president since he hates all the same religions the Christian fundamentalists hate (not that anyone’s menntioning it.) But somehow I don’t think his speech is going to be as resonant as this one:

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute–where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote–where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference–and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.”…

“For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew–or a Quaker–or a Unitarian–or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim- -but tomorrow it may be you–until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.”

“Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end–where all men and all churches are treated as equal–where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice–where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind–and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

“But let me stress again that these are my views–for contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters–and the church does not speak for me.”

“Whatever issue may come before me as President–on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject–I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.”

“But if the time should ever come–and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible–when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.”

“But I do not intend to apologize for these views to my critics of either Catholic or Protestant faith–nor do I intend to disavow either my views or my church in order to win this election.”

As Frederick Clarkson wrote over at Talk To Action:

JFK … gave a speech that was a landmark in the politics of separation of church and state. It is a fair and reasonable and inspired standard by which politicians may distinguish themselves from the views of the religious institutions to which they happen to belong.

I think John Kerry would have done well to have emulated it when he was attacked by religious rightist Catholic prelates, among others, in 2004. I think too, that the Inside the Beltway consultants who are now busy recasting bedrock Democratic principles (so well articulated by JFK in 1960) in an effort to pander to evangelicals and conservative Catholics — ought to reconsider the way they are demolishing respect for the constitutional principle of no religious tests for public office.

No kidding. The religious right has managed to make it an unspoken test that a president must be not only a person who claims an approved religion, but that they are personally deeply religious. (And Democratic advisors are working overtime to get their candidates to join them, unfortunately.) Gone are the days when someone like Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan could simply tell religious voters he is a Quaker or a Presbyterian and have that suffice as evidence of acceptable religiosity. Now, candidates have to prostrate themselves before preachers and their flocks and explicitly testify in great detail how their religious beliefs will guide their decision making.

It’s a shame. Kennedy successfully tempered a long standing anti-catholic bias held by a rather large number in this country by appealing to the fundamental American belief in a separation of church and state and by reassuring them that he would make decisions based on what his conscience tells him is in the national interest “and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates.” Romney will be trying to temper an anti-Mormon bias among a sub-set of the Religious Right by assuring them (through coded conservative Christian language) that he is just as biased against other religions and non-believers as they are and will definitely bow to outside pressures or dictates — from them.

Somehow Jack and Mitt don’t strike me as trying to accomplish the same things, although I’m quite sure the press will immediately start singing “I wonder what the King is doing tonight?” and talking about how his fabulous shoulders, chin and hair are “Kennedyesque.”

.

Sweet Neocons

by digby

I have been writing for years that the neocons are always wrong about everything and this new NIE basically stating that the Iran threat has been vastly overstated drives that home once more. It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.

The crux of their argument, going all the way back to their membership in the Scoop Jackson cult is that a vastly weakened America is in grave danger of being taken over by a totalitarian tyrant and that the intelligence agencies are underestimating the threat.

Fareed Zakaria addressed this phenomenon a few years ago in a column in Newsweek:

For decades some conservatives, including many who now wield great influence, have had a tendency to vastly exaggerate the threat posed by tyrannical regimes.

It all started with the now famous “Team B” exercise. During the early 1970s, hard-line conservatives pilloried the CIA for being soft on the Soviets. As a result, CIA Director George Bush agreed to allow a team of outside experts to look at the intelligence and come to their own conclusions. Team B–which included Paul Wolfowitz–produced a scathing report, claiming that the Soviet threat had been badly underestimated.

In retrospect, Team B’s conclusions were wildly off the mark. Describing the Soviet Union, in 1976, as having “a large and expanding Gross National Product,” it predicted that it would modernize and expand its military at an awesome pace. For example, it predicted that the Backfire bomber “probably will be produced in substantial numbers, with perhaps 500 aircraft off the line by early 1984.” In fact, the Soviets had 235 in 1984.

The reality was that even the CIA’s own estimates–savaged as too low by Team B–were, in retrospect, gross exaggerations. In 1989, the CIA published an internal review of its threat assessments from 1974 to 1986 and came to the conclusion that every year it had “substantially overestimated” the Soviet threat along all dimensions. For example, in 1975 the CIA forecast that within 10 years the Soviet Union would replace 90 percent of its long-range bombers and missiles. In fact, by 1985, the Soviet Union had been able to replace less than 60 percent of them.

This wasn’t the first time politicians exaggerated a threat, of course; the famous “missile gap” in the 1960 race turned out to be more than a tad overstated. but there have been few factions in world history who have been so consistently wrong about every hysterical alarm they’ve raised.

This one was particularly interesting in light of what came later:

In 1981, after the publication of Clare Sterling’s book, “The Terror Network,” which argued that global terrorists were actually pawns of the Soviets, leading hard-liners asked the CIA to look into the relationship between Soviets and terrorist organizations. The agency concluded that although there was evidence that the Soviets had assisted groups such as the Palestine Liberation Organization with weapons and training, there was no evidence that the Soviets encouraged or approved these groups’ terrorist acts. However, hard-liners like Secretary of State Alexander Haig, CIA Chief William Casey and Policy Planning Director Wolfowitz rejected the draft as a naive, exculpatory brief and had the draft retooled to assert that the Soviets were heavily involved in supporting “revolutionary violence worldwide.”

Neocon worldview holds that Stalinist-style totalitarianism is behind every threat on the planet and that these Stalinist regimes are so formidable that the US has no choice but to eradicate them by force. They seem to have a psychological tic that prevents them seeing the world in any other terms. If you look at their writings from before 9/11, Islamic terrorism as we now know it to be organized wasn’t even on their radar. They were obsessed with the usual panoply of communist and ex-communist countries and with what they terms “rogue states” like Iraq and Iran. A confederation of violent stateless religious fundamentalists didn’t interest them in the least, which is why they completely ignored people running around with their hair on fire in the White House when they finally achieved real influence under the Bush administration. And it’s why they immediately pushed for an Iraq invasion when the “opportunity” presented itself on 9/11. They didn’t even consider how such a move might exacerbate the threat of terrorism because they believe the only worthy threat is that presented by a tyrannical nation state.

All of this is easily explained by their history (although I must admit that a right wing Trotskyist vision of permanent revolution takes on a mind bending hallucinatory twist in light of Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine.” It’s kind of the ultimate Straussian joke.)

After the invasion of Iraq, when they were once again proved to be wrong about everything, they immediately began pounding the war drums for a campaign against Iran. You’ll recall that the pithy little slogan making the rounds was “Anyone can go to Bagdad, real men go to Tehran.” Norman Podhoretz, the neocon godfather, made ever more hyperbolic statements about the need to invade and was quite convinced that it was going to happen. This hilarious vignette from TNR’s Johan Hariri’s expedition into the NRO heart of darkness shows just how sure he was:

Podhoretz and Buckley now inhabit opposite poles of post-September 11 American conservatism, and they stare at totally different Iraqs. Podhoretz is the Brooklyn-born, street-fighting kid who traveled through a long phase of left-liberalism to a pugilistic belief in America’s power to redeem the world, one bomb at a time. Today, he is a bristling gray ball of aggression, here to declare that the Iraq war has been “an amazing success.” He waves his fist and declaims, “There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria. ….This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It couldn’t have gone better.” He wants more wars, and fast. He is “certain” Bush will bomb Iran, and “thank God” for that.

Buckley is an urbane old reactionary, drunk on doubts. He founded National Review in 1955—when conservatism was viewed in polite society as a mental affliction—and he has always been skeptical of appeals to ‘the people,’ preferring the eternal top-down certainties of Catholicism. He united with Podhoretz in mutual hatred of Godless Communism, but, slouching into his eighties, he possesses a worldview that is ill-suited for the fight to bring democracy to the Muslim world. He was a ghostly presence on the cruise at first, appearing only briefly to shake a few hands. But now he has emerged, and his is fighting.

“Aren’t you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?” Buckley snaps at Podhoretz. He has just explained that he supported the war reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him that Saddam Hussein had WMD primed to be fired. “No,” Podhoretz replies. “As I say, they were shipped to Syria. During Gulf War One, the entire Iraqi air force was hidden in the deserts in Iran.” He says he is “heartbroken” by this “rise of defeatism on the right.” He adds, apropos of nothing, “There was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld. This defeatist talk only contributes to the impression we are losing, when I think we are winning.”

The audience cheers Podhoretz. The nuanced doubts of Bill Buckley leave them confused. Doesn’t he sound like the liberal media? Later, over dinner, a tablemate from Denver calls Buckley “a coward.” His wife nods and says, “Buckley’s an old man,” tapping her head with her finger to suggest dementia.

(Read the rest of Wolcott’s take on how Buckley got himself into that mess for some real chuckles.)

It’s a very useful rule of thumb in foreign affairs to simply assume that the neocons are wrong no matter what, because they are always wrong about everything. That is not to say that all conservatives are wrong about everything, and neocons merge with the more traditional hard line hawk faction just often enough that it gets confusing. But if Norman Podhoretz says something, you can pretty much take it to the bank that he’s going to be proven an ass. He’s well into his 80’s and he hasn’t been right yet, so I think the evidence is pretty clear that his powers of observation and analysis are unreliable to say the least.

Yesterday , I wrote that the Iran hawks would immediately call into question the motives and conclusions of the intelligence agencies. Well, here they come, via Think Progress:

Rather than modify his views on Iran, Podhoretz — who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 — aired a nasty conspiracy theory yesterday, attacking the authors of the NIE and accusing the intelligence community of deliberately “leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush:”

I must confess to suspecting that the intelligence community, having been excoriated for supporting the then universal belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, is now bending over backward to counter what has up to now been a similarly universal view (including as is evident from the 2005 NIE, within the intelligence community itself) that Iran is hell-bent on developing nuclear weapons. […]

But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations.

And his minions follow.

This was entirely predictable because this is what they have been doing for the past 40 years. When confronted with facts that don’t support their embedded worldview that Stalinist regimes are trying to kill us all in our beds, they just say the evidence disproving it is tainted. This has happened over and over again. Why would this be any different?

The real question is why anyone ever takes them seriously about anything.

Update: Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution alerted me to this great nugget about Casey:

“The day after Reagan’s inauguration, Secretary of State Alexander Haig, believing that Moscow had tried to assassinate him in Europe where he served as Supreme Allied Commander, linked the Soviet Union to all acts of international terrorism,” wrote Melvin Goodman, then-chief of the CIA’s office for Soviet analysis. “There was no evidence to support such a charge but Casey had read … Claire Sterling’s The Terror Network and, like Haig, was convinced that a Soviet conspiracy was behind global terrorism.” [Foreign Policy, Summer 1997]

CIA analysts had a secret reason for doubting Sterling’s theories, however. “Specialists at CIA dismissed the book, knowing that much of it was based on CIA ‘black propaganda,’ anticommunist allegations planted in the European press,” Goodman wrote. “But Casey contemptuously told CIA analysts that he had learned more from Sterling than from all of them.”

That’s undoubtedly why so many people think the yellow cake forgeries are the same thing. These people believe what they want to believe.

.

Frozen Shitpile

by digby

It isn’t just Florida and it isn’t just the US. This fetid pile is even affecting people who live above the arctic circle in Scandinavia. And there’s not much they can do about it:

A ballooning financial crisis in northern Norway is making the days even darker and colder than normal at this time of year. It now seems unavoidable that four townships will have to log heavy losses on their highly unfortunate investment in Citibank products.

Politicians in charge of the townships of Narvik, Hemnes, Hattfjelldal and Rana keep trying to blame Oslo-based Terra Securities for selling them the Citibank products, claiming Terra failed to advise them of the risk involved. The politicians also keep hoping someone will bail them out, after the international credit crisis reached beyond the Arctic Circle and deep into local coffers.

But the chances of that became even slimmer late this week, after Citibank’s parent Citigroup shut down a hedge fund and sold off its assets at less than half the value they’d held when peddled to the townships earlier in the year. The sale probably means a loss of an estimated NOK 350 million to the townships.

They intend to file claims against Terra in the hope of recovering some of their money. But Terra’s bankruptcy earlier this week leaves the townships as unsecured creditors far down the list of other creditors deemed to have stronger claims for compensation.

Citibank, seen as the only player that earned any money on the soured deal through its fee income, has blamed the financial woes on “weak markets” that have hit investors all over the world. Citibank has claimed it fully communicated the risk of its products to Terra, which in turn sold them to the townships.

The townships are left holding the empty bag, and may be placed under public administration if they’re unable to pay for social services seen as essential.

Coming soon to a town or county near you.

Update: The NY Times also did a story on this a couple of days ago.

H/T to LM

.

Bush of Arabia

by digby

I’m sure I’m not the first to make this observation, but NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez’s racist statement from yesterday regarding the fabulist W. Thomas Smith’s dispatches from Lebanon, is a teensy bit ironic considering certain statements from some blue-blooded Americans recently:

As one of our sources put it: “The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas.” While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him.” (emphasis added)

Six weeks ago:

THE PRESIDENT: …But this — we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously. And we’ll continue to work with all nations about the seriousness of this threat.

Today:

“Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” Bush said, pointing out that Tehran continues to try to enrich uranium for civilian purposes and therefore develop technology that could be used for a weapon.

[…]

“What’s to say they couldn’t start another covert nuclear weapons program?” Bush asked.

The latest estimate shows “Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat to peace,” Bush said.

Maybe Junior caught the “Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies” virus hanging out with his good pal Ahmad Chalabi.

*And, by the way, he keeps saying that nations cannot be allowed to get “the knowledge” necessary to build a nuclear bomb. Does he really think that’s something he can stop? And by what means, I wonder?

.

Rogue Nation Part XXI

by digby

From Scott Horton at Harper’s:

Continuing its recent spree of criminality in the alleged pursuit of law enforcement, the Bush Justice Department formally advised a British Court last week that it is fully entitled to kidnap foreigners (i.e., Britons) off the street around the world and carry them off to secret prisons. The claim was formerly thought to relate to terrorists. But no longer. Now the Bush Justice Department asserts the right to kidnap anyone it suspects of a crime. The Sunday Times (London) reports:

America has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States. A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

[…]

The US government’s view emerged during a hearing involving Stanley Tollman, a former director of Chelsea football club and a friend of Baroness Thatcher, and his wife Beatrice. The Tollmans, who control the Red Carnation hotel group and are resident in London, are wanted in America for bank fraud and tax evasion. They have been fighting extradition through the British courts.

During a hearing last month Lord Justice Moses, one of the Court of Appeal judges, asked Alun Jones QC, representing the US government, about its treatment of Gavin, Tollman’s nephew. Gavin Tollman was the subject of an attempted abduction during a visit to Canada in 2005. Jones replied that it was acceptable under American law to kidnap people if they were wanted for offences in America. “The United States does have a view about procuring people to its own shores which is not shared,” he said.

The US Government is kidnapping British Businessmen wanted for bank fraud off the streets?

What in the hell is going on here?

I thought it was outrageous that they were doing this to suspected terrorists. But Europeans wanted for white collar crime? They’ve turned our country into the god damned mafia.

They really should think long and hard about this,though, because if it become the norm for nations to kidnap those who they believe have committed crimes and spirit them back to their own countries for trial, then the members of the Bush administration had better make sure they travel with an armored escort at all times. Let’s just say there are likely to be some warrants issued by somebody once this becomes known. The list of potential crimes is getting very long indeed.

.

Aristocratic Populists

by digby

I have a new post up about how we serfs are being manipulated by the oxy-morons.

.

Investor States

by digby

David Sirota over at CAF pointed to an AP article from last night that should make all of us sit up and take notice:

MONTPELIER, Vt. –A Canadian company wants to open a new plant in Claremont, N.H., to bottle fresh water from a source in Stockbridge, Vt.

But if Vermont wants to limit how much water the company takes, it may run afoul of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

States around the country are growing increasingly worried about the threats posed to their laws and regulations by the secret tribunals that resolve disputes in international trade. Experts say everything from environmental rules to the licensing of nurses and other professionals could be affected.

“Free trade agreements are to state sovereignty and economic development what global climate change is to the environment and natural resources,” said state Sen. Virginia Lyons, D-Chittenden. “I think it’s a really significant issue for our state, and for every state in the country.”

I’m not sure most people realized that these deals could actually adversely affect well … us, in any other way than perhaps job loss (which we are told is a perfectly reasonable trade-offs for the privilege of buying cheap goods.) As bad as that is, it’s not the whole story. These trade deals basically make it possible for global corporate interests to circumvent our laws right here in the good old USA in a number of different ways.

Public Citizen did a report on this prior to the CAFTA vote back in 2005 that may be surprising to those who (like me) didn’t follow the details all that closely:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The looming congressional fight over the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) will be greatly affected by the growing list of NAFTA “investor-state” cases, now totaling billions in compensation demands, in which foreign investors are attacking regulatory and other government actions before closed, extra-judicial tribunals, Public Citizen said today. Passage of the proposed controversial CAFTA-NAFTA expansion would extend the investor-state tribunal system, which allows private enforcement of extraordinary investor privileges granted in international “trade” pacts, to corporations and investors operating in six additional nations.

In a new report, NAFTA Chapter 11 Investor-State Cases: Lessons for the Central America Free Trade Agreement, Public Citizen describes how Canadian cattle producers are using NAFTA to demand $300 million in compensation from U.S. taxpayer funds, claiming that the Canadian cattle import ban instituted after mad cow disease was found in Canada violates their NAFTA rights. In addition, a Canadian tobacco company is using the private NAFTA tribunals to attack the U.S.tobacco settlements. The report is available here and is being released today at events in Washington, D.C., Sacramento and Olympia, Wash.

These claims are among the 42 cases filed thus far by corporate interests and investors under NAFTA’s “Chapter 11” investor provisions, which grant foreign interests more expansive legal rights and privileges than those enjoyed by U.S. citizens or corporations. With only 11 of the 42 cases finalized, some $35 million in taxpayer funds have been granted to five corporations that have succeeded with their claims. An additional $28 billion has been claimed from investors in all three NAFTA nations. The U.S. government’s legal costs for the defense of just one recent case topped $3 million. Seven cases against the United States are currently in active arbitration.

[…]

“That foreign producers can attack vital public health measures like the mad cow import ban or the U.S. tobacco settlements demonstrates yet again how the NAFTA investor protection model included in CAFTA constitutes an extraordinary threat to policies vital to protecting public health,” Wallach said. “We wonder what role this secretive $300 million NAFTA challenge is playing in the Bush administration’s irresponsible proposal to reopen the border to Canadian beef and cattle imports in March. It is hard to imagine why else the administration would expose U.S. consumers to risk of such a deadly disease except that this NAFTA-created $300 million in liability prompts the administration to once again allow trade concerns to trump public health.”

Corporate investors also have used NAFTA’s investor-state enforcement system to challenge domestic court rulings, local and state environmental policies, municipal contracts, tax policy, federal controlled substances regulations, federal and state anti-gambling policies, a federal government’s alleged failure to provide water rights, and even the provision of public postal services. In most instances, challengers have sought millions of dollars in damages, claiming that regulatory measures and government actions negatively affected their profitability. If an investor prevails in its NAFTA claim, the losing nation is obliged to compensate the firm from the national treasury. Among the 42 cases detailed in the report:

* Aspects of the U.S. state tobacco settlements of the late 1990s, which have resulted in a dramatic drop in the rate of teen smoking in the United States, have been challenged as arbitrary and unfair by Canadian tobacco traders.

* A California regulation requiring the backfilling of open-pit mines has been challenged by a Canadian mining enterprise, which plans to develop a giant open-pit cyanide gold mine in Imperial Valley, Calif., and which owns and operates similar mines around the world.

* UPS is seeking $160 million in compensation from Canada, claiming that its government-run parcel delivery system undermines UPS’ market share.

* Bans or phase-outs of toxic substances have been challenged three times. A challenge to Canada’s phase-out of certain uses of the pesticide lindane has been initiated by a U.S. company. Canada’s proposed ban on the gasoline additive MMT was challenged, but before the case was finalized Canada reversed the policy and paid $13 million to an American firm; California’s ban on the gasoline additive MTBE has been challenged by a Canadian firm, and that multimillion-dollar case is still pending.

“These cases show that there is a growing threat to democratic governance and state sovereignty as more and more state and local government policies, even court decisions, are targeted by NAFTA investors,” said Mary Bottari, a policy analyst at Public Citizen and author of the report…While President Bush speaks of a new doctrine of aggressively promoting democracy, in fact the international trade pacts he is pushing export the worst of anti-democratic values around the world.”

I don’t think many Americans knew that NAFTA would allow this sort of thing. Or if they did, they assumed it would never be used against little old us. But the fact is that these trade deals, and the international economic order administered by the WTO and the World Bank are changing the very nature of what it means to be a country. In a dynamic global economy, having a global system of laws that supersedes American laws should be something that we at least debate openly. Little children and pets are already being poisoned by some foreign goods. Have we ceded our democratic right to make laws and regulations that protect us against such things? If Canada had a mad cow problem, do we really not have the right to keep that beef out of our food supply?

I can see why the e.coli conservatives might find these secretive tribunals attractive, but I don’t think most Americans knew that this was what they were signing on for.

.

Ooops

by digby

I can’t wait to see how the Iran hawks spin this.

BREAKING NEWS: U.S. Report Says Iran Halted Nuclear Weapons Program in 2003

I suspect they will just drag out their old tried and true tropes against against the intelligence agencies, perhaps even start up a new Team B project. In fact, they’ll likely have to dredge up how the CIA supposedly screwed up the Iraq WMD assessment, in which case we should bring out the Orville Reddenbacker. It should be quite a show.

But time runs short for this administration. I don’t know for sure that this means we can breathe a little bit easier, but I think it probably does. It’s hard to see that Bush could push the button with this kind of assessment in public.

Of course, they are nuts…

.