Month: June 2010

Mine, Baby, Mine!

by tristero

US geologists discover vast mineral deposits in Afghanistan

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

And the next paragraph is especially funny:

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

As if people and nations never fought to the death to possess humongous mineral resources.

No filthy bin Laden’s gonna get my lithium!

Cheney Fading In The Rearview Mirror

by digby

Newsweek wonders why Papa Dick Cheney has been so silent on the oil spill, since virtually everything he did in office was in service of the oil industry:

His ears ringing with the cries of “Cheney’s Katrina,” a title many are striving to bestow on the gulf oil spill, one might expect the former VP to convene journalists for a speech, like he did in May last year at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute to talk about national security. That lengthy rebuttal was timed specially to coincide with a speech President Obama gave on the same topic—a ploy calculated to get the maximum press attention. The closest we have this time is Liz Cheney, Dick’s daughter, arguing with Arianna Huffington on ABC’s This Week.

Maybe he knows that he has defenders out there like Andrew Breitbart, who when asked about this in a panel I attended here in LA a couple of weeks ago, immediately started screaming hysterically about how “all liberals ever talk about is Halliburton, Halliburton, Halliburton! OMG Halliburton!” which seemed to strike the audience as an excellent answer.

Seriously, Cheney knows that there will be no blowback on him for this. We don’t want to play the blame game with the previous administration — especially now that the current administration pretty much adopted the same policies.

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Writing it Right This Time

by digby

So Arizona is going to introduce a bill to pressure Israel to deport the children and grandchildren of European Jews to Poland and Germany. You’d think there would be some kind of outcry, wouldn’t you?

Oh, wait. They just want to revoke the citizenship of the children of Mexicans so they can be deported to Mexico (and other ocuntries “down there.”) Not a problem. My bad:

Buoyed by recent public opinion polls suggesting they’re on the right track with illegal immigration, Arizona Republicans will likely introduce legislation this fall that would deny birth certificates to children born in Arizona – and thus American citizens according to the U.S. Constitution – to parents who are not legal U.S. citizens. The law largely is the brainchild of state Sen. Russell Pearce, a Republican whose suburban district, Mesa, is considered the conservative bastion of the Phoenix political scene. He is a leading architect of the Arizona law that sparked outrage throughout the country: Senate Bill 1070, which allows law enforcement officers to ask about someone’s immigration status during a traffic stop, detainment or arrest if reasonable suspicion exists – things like poor English skills, acting nervous or avoiding eye contact during a traffic stop. (See the battle for Arizona: will a border crackdown work?)

But the likely new bill is for the kids. While SB 1070 essentially requires of-age migrants to have the proper citizenship paperwork, the potential “anchor baby” bill blocks the next generation from ever being able to obtain it. The idea is to make the citizenship process so difficult that illegal immigrants pull up the “anchor” and leave. (See pictures of the Great Wall of America.)

The question is whether that would violate the U.S. Constitution. The 14th Amendment states that “all persons, born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” It was intended to provide citizenship for freed slaves and served as a final answer to the Dred Scott case, cementing the federal government’s control over citizenship.

But that was 1868. Today, Pearce says the 14th Amendment has been “hijacked” by illegal immigrants. “They use it as a wedge,” Pearce says. “This is an orchestrated effort by them to come here and have children to gain access to the great welfare state we’ve created.” Pearce says he is aware of the constitutional issues involved with the bill and vows to introduce it nevertheless. “We will write it right.” He and other Republicans in the red state Arizona point to popular sympathy: 58% of Americans polled by Rasmussen think illegal immigrants whose children are born here should not receive citizenship; support for that stance is 76% among Republicans.

This is just righting a long ago wrong. After all, if you’d have polled the country before they passed the 14th amendment, I have no doubt that 76% of racist confederates were against it, along with a bunch of other ignorant fools who have no idea what they are saying, just as they are today.

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Bai Bai Baby

by digby

There’s a lot to digest in Matt Bai’s article about Obama as party leader, and I’ll discuss more of it later because it’s fascinating. But this stuck out at me:

It’s no accident that even those who surfed in on the Obama wave should have such different notions of what it signified. Obama himself never really settled the point. During the campaign, he alternated seamlessly between two sides of his political persona: the postpartisan reformer and the progressive revivalist. On one hand, reaching out to disaffected and independent voters, he vowed to dispense with the culture wars and leave behind the 20th-century orthodoxies of both parties. At the same time, he inspired a hopeful frenzy among liberals who assumed that he was, at heart, one of them. Propelled through the fall campaign by a cratering economy and his opponent’s weak campaign, Obama was never really compelled to reconcile these two ideals. The vague notion of “change,” whatever kind of change that meant, seemed good enough for an anxious electorate.

Throughout his first year in office — perhaps out of necessity, given the near depression he inherited, but also under pressure from older leaders in his own party who spoke openly of another New Deal — Obama tilted toward progressive revival. Since the Massachusetts vote, however, Obama seems to be pushing back in the other direction, moving to reclaim his reformist appeal. In recent months, he has renewed his overtures to Republican lawmakers, thrown his support behind nuclear power and, most significant, established a commission on fiscal reform — all of which probably amounts to an acknowledgment that he can’t continue to hemorrhage confidence among the independent voters who were an integral part of his election.

The rest of the article is based upon the notion that Obama is not interested in corrupt party politics. He is portrayed as a transpartisan leader, incorruptible, above the fray, beholden to no one, wanting to build ad hoc alliances without tribal affiliation. Allegedly, he’s a new type of politician dedicated to fundamentally altering politics as we know it — in fact, he seeks nothing short of changing the heuristics and principles human beings have been using for millenia to organize themselves for collective action. It’s the kind of thing that’s very inspiring to young idealists and old opportunists.

But what is described in those two paragraphs is actually about as typical a politics as could be imagined. You have a slick politician with the gift of making various constituencies believe he is one of them elected to the presidency then being as ideological as he thinks he can be in the first year (in his case, not much) in order to deliver a little something to the base and tacking to “the middle” as soon as he possibly can. It’s the oldest story in the book — there’s nothing reformative or transformative about it (unless you think replacing “Democratic Party” with “Obama’s brand” is revolutionary.) The only difference is the marketing.

What I don’t know is if these people really believe this Bai blarney or not. And I’m not sure whether it scares me more if they do or if they don’t.

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What Happened To “What Works”?

by digby

So even the excuse for the Austerity Campaign is bullshit. Here’s Krugman:

Consider, if you will, the comparative cases of Ireland and Spain.

Both countries appeared, on the surface, to be fiscally responsible until the crisis hit, with balanced budgets and relatively low debt. Both discovered that this was an illusion: revenues were buoyed by immense real estate bubbles, and when the bubbles burst they plunged into deficit — and found themselves potentially on the hook for large bank losses.

The countries responded differently, however. Ireland quickly embraced harsh austerity; Spain has had to be dragged into austerity, and still faces major political unrest.

So, how’s it going? This article is typical of what you read: it describes the Irish as doing what has to be done, while the Spaniards dither. And it has good things to say about how the Irish response is working:

Much bitterness but also stoicism; markets impressed by Irish resolve to bite the austerity bullet.

Well, I guess that’s right — if by “markets impressed” you mean a CDS spread of 226 basis points, compared with 206 points for Spain; not to mention a 10-year bond rate of 5.11 percent, compared with 4.46 percent for Spain.

So, I’m glad to hear that Ireland’s stoic acceptance of austerity is reassuring markets; it must be true, because that’s what everyone says. Because if I didn’t know that, I might look at the data and conclude that markets actually have less confidence in Ireland than they do in Spain, and that austerity in the face of a deeply depressed economy doesn’t actually reassure markets at all.

But hey, what are you going to believe: what everyone knows, or your own lying eyes?

Everything’s Kabuki apparently, even this.

So, what’s really going on here? I’ve posited that it’s a Shock Doctrine move to take advantage of global economic insecurity to dismantle the welfare state. Krugman has said that he thinks part of it economists want to “appear tough.” Brad Delong thinks it might have to do with governing elites being too distant from the concerns of ordinary people. I think everyone agrees that this seems to have come up out of the blue and goes against what most experts assumed to be the accepted economic prescriptions for decades until now.

I feel as if we are watching a slow motion train wreck, mouths agape, powerless to do anything to stop it — the Very Serious People are all on board, assured in their own minds, for different reasons, that history has ended and nothing that came before can possibly be of any consequence.

In fact, I feel exactly the same way I felt in the lead up to the Iraq war.

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Just Rattle Your Jewelry

by digby

People are always asking why Americans don’t protest like the they do in the rest of the world. It’s a good question. In Australia, for instance, the aggrieved don’t sit around and whine, they take to the streets to protest government policies:

Many of the placard-waving protesters gathered in a Perth park wore suits and ties, and impassioned speeches were delivered from the back of a flat-bed truck by two billionaires, including Australia’s richest woman.

Gina Rinehart’s pearls glistened in the sunlight as she bellowed through a megaphone: “Axe the tax!” Ms Rinehart has a personal fortune of $4.8bn (£2.7bn). Andrew Forrest, in monogrammed worker’s overalls, told the well-mannered crowd that Australia was “turning Communist”. Mr Forrest is the country’s fourth richest person, worth an estimated $4.2bn.

Both Mr Forrest and Ms Rinehart have amassed their wealth from digging up iron ore in the remote Pilbara region. Like other mining magnates, they have grown fabulously rich during a resources boom based largely on China’s insatiable demand for the coal, iron, nickel and other minerals that lie in abundance beneath Australia’s rust-red soil.

Now Kevin Rudd’s Labour government is planning to levy an extra tax on the mining industry, and the industry is furious. The issue has dominated the political agenda for weeks, and is even threatening to torpedo Mr Rudd’s chance of being returned to power at an election due to be held before the end of this year

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I suppose it’s good that we aren’t the only ones who are screwed up. Unfortunately, except for the fact that Jamie Dimon isn’t protesting in the streets, it’s not all that different from the dynamic here in the US, particularly this:

For their part, the mining companies, led by the multi-nationals BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, claim the tax will reduce their competitiveness and threaten thousands of jobs. Amid much fanfare, they have already shelved a number of projects. They have also launched a major advertising campaign. The government has responded with its own advertisements, using $38m of public money. Before coming to power, Mr Rudd promised to curb taxpayer-funded advertising on political issues.

So far, the miners appear to be winning the argument. A poll commissioned by the industry, and conducted in nine marginal seats, found 48 per cent of people opposed to the super tax, with 28 per cent in favour. Nearly one in three said they were less likely to vote for Labour because of it.

This week’s rally – organised by the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC), which represents the smaller operators – was timed to coincide with a visit by Mr Rudd to Perth, the city that is Australia’s resources powerhouse.

As the Prime Minister addressed a lunch hosted by the Perth Press Club in the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Ms Rinehart was filling her lungs with air in a nearby park. “And what are we gonna tell those jittery Labor MPs in marginal seats?” demanded the normally reclusive billionaire through her loudspeaker. “Axe the tax! Axe the tax!” chanted the crowd.

“And what does our Premier [the Liberal Premier of Western Australia, Colin Barnett] say?” asked Ms Rinehart, almost hoarse. “Axe the tax! Axe the tax!” replied the protesters. She went on: “And Kerry [Stokes, proprietor of the state’s newspaper], please listen: what should our West Australian newspaper be saying? Axe the tax!” More cheers from the crowd.

Mr Forrest once called Mr Rudd a close friend. Now he is the prime minister’s most outspoken critic. At the rally, he declared: “We represent so much more than mining; we represent the hopes and dreams of millions of people who depend on the mining industry, who depend on the resource sector for a strong Australian economy.” (His hyperbole did not go unnoticed by sober commentators; the industry employs about 130,000 people.)

As the crowd waved their neatly written placards – handed out by AMEC, and bearing slogans such as “Super tax, super stupid” and “Super tax kills jobs” – Mr Forrest noted that China had been debating a lower resources tax to assist its industry. “I ask you: which communist [country] is turning capitalist, and which capitalist is turning communist,” he proclaimed.

I guess the fact that the tea partiers turn out to be well off retirees shouldn’t surprise us so much, should it?

This whole thing reminds me of the caller I heard on Limbaugh years ago, who said that he wanted his employer to get tax cuts because it meant that he might get a raise someday. I thought the poor fool was a peculiarly American product of right wing propaganda. I can’t say it makes me feel good to find out that it’s a global phenomenon.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

by digby

SIFFting through cinema: It’s a wrap

By Dennis Hartley

A Man Within–Smack, baby, smack.

The 2010 Seattle International Film Festival is wrapping up its 24 day run of 405 films this weekend (ow, my ass). As usual, I didn’t catch every film that I originally planned to, but a few of them unexpectedly “caught” me, as it were (with such an overwhelming catalog, sometimes you’ve just gotta say “WTF, Joel” and throw a dart at the schedule). So, what can I say about SIFF 2010? I laughed, I cried, I circled endlessly for non-existent street parking or paid exorbitant fees to price-gouging downtown Seattle parking garages (I know this goes against the grain of the urban hipster elitism that permeates such events, but for once, I’d like to see someone put on a film festival wherein all the venues are located in, say, mall theaters-you know…where the goddam parking lots are). But hey…I do this happily, dear reader-so that you don’t have to (you buyin’ this crap?).

Miss Nobody: The bad sleep well.

“Black comedy” is a fickle art form. Too dark-nobody laughs. Too ha-ha funny, and it’s merely comedy. One thing that does not work for black comedy is “cute”-although it can provide a touch of irony, if the doses are very carefully measured (see John Waters). Miss Nobody, which premiered at SIFF this week, is just flat out too cute for its own purposes.

Leslie Bibb stars as mousy (but cute) secretary Sarah Jane, a “nobody” in the food chain at a large pharmaceutical company. At the urging of her workplace confidante (Missi Pyle) she applies for an open junior executive position. Much to her surprise, she gets the job-only to have it snatched from her at the last possible moment by a weaselly, Machiavellian corporate climber (Brandon Routh) who offers her a job as his executive assistant with transparently smarmy sincerity. Sarah Jane swallows her humiliation and disappointment and takes the offer anyway. Her mother (Kathy Baker) sees a silver lining, urging her to go ahead and dig for the gold. What the hell, Sarah Jane figures, if she can hook up with her new boss, she can at least become “Mrs.” Machiavellian corporate climber (besides-he’s, you know, “cute”). Her “plan B” however is dashed when, in the midst of putting the moves on her in his apartment late one night, her boss lets it slip that he already has a fiancée. While physically struggling to put the kibosh on his amorous advances, Sarah Jane inadvertently causes his death by freak accident. She is still in shock the next morning when she goes to work, fully expecting to be “found out” any moment. She receives an even bigger shock when she is called into the chief executive’s office, not to be turned over to the authorities, but to be congratulated on her new promotion-to her late boss’ position. The little gears in her brain begin to click, and a more sinister “plan B” for climbing the corporate ladder emerges. What a kooky setup!

It’s been a while since I sat so stone-faced through a “comedy”. I could sense that director Tim Cox and writer Doug Steinberg were going for a Serial Mom vibe, but their film plays more like a glorified episode of Sex in the City, right down to the chirpy narration by the protagonist. Cox’s film has a slick, glossy look, but the flat and predictable storyline drags it down. Even the usually dependable Adam Goldberg (or as I like to call him, “Gen Y’s Joey Bishop”) can’t save this one. The film also seemed awfully similar to a 1997 indie starring Carol Kane, called Office Killer (which I rather enjoyed). Maybe it’s just bad timing-the employment situation is grim enough these days.

Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, Rebel – Puka shell necklace optional.

SIFF featured some great documentaries this year. Here’s a couple more to watch for:

Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, Rebel– Did you know Ray Bradbury was only paid $400 for the original serialized version of Fahrenheit 451 published in Playboy in 1954? That’s one of the interesting tidbits I picked up from this lengthy yet absorbing documentary about the iconoclastic founder and publisher of the magazine that I, personally, have always read strictly for the articles (of clothing that were conspicuously absent-no, I’m kidding). Seriously-there’s little of prurient interest here. In a manner of speaking, it’s mostly about “the articles”. Brigitte Berman (director of the excellent 1985 documentary Artie Shaw: Time is All You’ve Got) interweaves well-selected archival footage and present day interviews with Hefner and friends (as well as some of his detractors) to paint a fascinating portrait. Whether you admire him or revile him, as you watch the film you come to realize that there is probably no other public figure of the past 50 years who has so cannily tapped in to or (perhaps arguably) so directly influenced the sexual, social, political and pop-cultural zeitgeist of liberated free-thinkers everywhere.

William S. Burroughs: A Man Within– Director Yony Leyser has shouldered an ambitious undertaking for his debut feature-attempting to decipher one the more enigmatic literary figures of the 20th century. As he so beautifully illustrates in his film, William S. Burroughs was much more than just a gifted writer or one of the founding fathers of the Beats; he was like some cross-generational counterculture/proto-punk Zeus, from whose head sprung Hunter S. Thompson, Lester Bangs, Ken Kesey, William Gibson, Terence McKenna, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Jim Carroll and Kurt Cobain. Yet, there was an evasive, almost alien “otherness” to him, not to mention a questionable personal history. As John Waters so glibly points out in the film, he “…was a hard guy to like”, referring to Burroughs the junkie, gun nut and wife-killer (accident, so the legend goes). Leyser gathers up all of these conflicting aspects of Burroughs’ makeup and does an admirable job at providing some insights. There’s a lot of rare archival footage, mixed in with observations from friends and admirers like Laurie Anderson, David Cronenberg, Iggy Pop, Jello Biafra, Patti Smith and Peter Weller (who also narrates). Recommended!

And now, if you would please bow your head and join me in prayer:

Update by digby: How about a hand of applause for Dennis’ Bataan death march through this huge festival to bring the highlights to the masses? I, for one, am in awe. I haven’t seen that many movies in such a short time since sometime in 1986 — and I had the help of stimulants.

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Crackin’ Up

by digby

If you are of a certain age (or just appreciate 80s new wave pop) and you’d like to just make it all stop for a while, Gordon Skene at Newstalgia has dug up a vintage concert by Nick Lowe and his Cowboy Outfit from 1984.

I saw Nick Lowe at the Cow Palace in San Francisco with the Cars around this time (with Dennis Hartley as a matter of fact.) It was great. But then, I was young and everything was great, even though I didn’t know it at the time.

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The Right Kind Of Welfare For The Right Kind of People

by digby

Steve Benen discusses Barney Frank’s challenge to the deficit hawks to cut the defense budget and concludes with this:

Frank’s commission does offer alleged deficit hawks an opportunity to rise to the occasion. As Paul Waldman recently explained, “They’re quite happy to borrow hundreds of billions to spend on defense, because they just happen to like spending money on defense…. You can’t call yourself a ‘deficit hawk’ if the only programs you want to cut are the ones you don’t like anyway.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said, publicly and repeatedly, that the United States can’t keep spending such vast amounts of money on the military indefinitely. Any chance conservative deficit hawks — the ones who claim to be desperate to cut government spending — will step up and agree?

Simple answers to simple questions: No.

“Deficit reduction” doesn’t mean deficit reduction. It means welfare state reduction, period. Military spending is sacred — like the right to pack heat in church and gas guzzling. It is non-negotiable. (The irony, of course, is that the Military Industrial Complex is basically workfare for white guys — it holds up a huge part of our economy and makes a lot of people very wealthy, all on the taxpayer’s dime. It would be immoral to take that away from suffering ex-Generals and engineers who can’t make anything that doesn’t blow up.)

These people don’t care about debt, they care that the peasants have become uppity andunvirtuous and it’s time to put them back in their places — desperate and willing to do anything to avoid losing whatever meager assets they have. You know, the natural order of things.

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Sins of The Fathers

by digby

So 89 year old Helen Thomas is excoriated for her comments that the Israeli Jews should go back where their parents came from — “Poland, Germany, the United States” but the governor of Arizona blithely says that American children should go back where their parents came from and that’s considered perfectly normal political discourse, not even worthy of discussion:

“It is illegal to trespass in our country. It has always been illegal. And people have determined that they want to take that chance, that responsibility. It’s not going to tear them apart. They can take their children back with them.”

What a lovely piece of work this woman is. Arizonans must all be so proud.

So, it’s ok to say that American born Hispanics should be forced to “go back where they came from” but saying it about Israeli Jews is worthy of a witch burning. Why is that?

I honestly can’t get over the fact that people are so unable to see the direct correlation here between Thomas’s ramblings and what Brewer and the rest of the “Repeal the 14th amendment” people are saying. The uber-patriots of the wingnut freakshow who fetishize American exceptionalism have once again taken it upon themselves to decide which American babies are worthy of growing up in their own country. And everybody thinks this is just fine.

And by the way, it has not “always” been illegal to cross the Mexican border to work, not by a long shot. The border has been open and closed to varying degrees since there was a border. The history of Mexico and the United States is closely interwoven, both having been colonized by Europeans, native peoples shoved all over the place and a series of wars creating the borders that exist today. There are many, many Americans of Hispanic descent whose ancestors were here long before Jan Brewer’s. The definition of who is a truly American is no more her prerogative than it is anyone else. So the only possible way to do this is to say that “American” means someone who was born in the United States or who became a naturalized citizen, period. Anything else is just nasty nativist nonsense, no matter who says it.

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