Month: January 2015

The people who run our economic lives watch this

by digby

I just … well …

I assume that what they mean by that is “are men now second class citizens?” The answer, of course, is no. But the question is revealing, don’t you think?

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“Over to you, welcome to the fight”
by Tom Sullivan

Bill Moyers’ show may have signed off last night, but as Digby noted, he’ll continue at his website to do what he’s done for so many decades. Moyers closes out his show with a message both of apology and encouragement to the next generation:

BILL MOYERS: Mary Christina Wood reminds us that democracy, too is a public trust – a reciprocal agreement between generations to keep it in good repair and pass it along. Our country’s DNA carries an inherent promise for every citizen of an equal opportunity at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our history resonates with the hallowed idea – hallowed by blood – of government of, by, and for the people. Our great progressive struggles have been waged to make sure ordinary citizens, and not just the rich and privileged, share in the benefits of a free society. In the words of Louis Brandeis, one of the greatest of our Supreme Court justices, “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

Yet look at just a few recent headlines: this one from “The New York Times”: “U.S. Wealth Gap Is Widest in Decades”. From the website Alternet: “Just 40 Americans Own As Much Wealth As Half the United States.” From Slate.com: “The Great Wealth Meltdown: Middle-Class Families Are Worth Less Today Than in 1969.” And from “The Economist”: “Wealth without workers, workers without wealth,” pointing to the reality that “for all but an elite few, work no longer guarantees a rising income.”

So as the next generation steps forward, I am tempted to think that the only thing my generation can say to them is: we’re sorry. Sorry for the mess you’re inheriting. Sorry we broke the trust. But I know in my heart that’s not what they ask or expect. So instead I recommend to them the example of Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, another of my heroes from the past. He battled the excesses of the first Gilded Age a century ago so boldly and proudly that he went down in history as “Fighting Bob.” He told us, “…democracy is a life; and involves continual struggle.” I keep asking myself, what if that struggle is the palpable reality without which this world would be truly barren?

So to this new generation I say: over to you, welcome to the fight.

Speaking of Wisconsin, I guess my 80-something aunt in Milwaukee (who still canvasses) won’t have reason to call me on Saturdays anymore to ask if I caught Moyers’ show. Over to me.

Moyers’ finale

by digby

His show is no more.  He’s going to a well-deserved retirement.  But I will miss him very much. He’s an original and there’s nobody like him.

This was from his last broadcast and it’s an amazing swan song.  Do yourself a favor and set aside some time to watch it:

The good news is that his web-site will continue with all the good stuff it’s been delivering for some time now under the guidance of Joshua Holland. And maybe Moyers himself will make an occasional appearance.

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You’re as free as they say you are


by digby

Don’t click on this Storify if you don’t want to ruin your day with a long line of examples of sick, violent Americans issuing death threats to people who criticised the movie “American Sniper.” These are the same Americans, I’m sure, who were rending their garments over North Korea allegedly threatening to kill Americans who wanted to see “The Interview.”

This response is common whenever anyone writes about guns in this country.  Can we all see the potential problem here? I knew that you could.

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Jihadi Babies

by digby

Fox is breathlessly reporting this story about ISIS creating Jihadi babies on every one of its shows. I searched for a legitimate news story about it and only came up with this little blurb from The Week.

“Sister’s Role in Jihad,” a guide for mothers raising jihadi babies, has surfaced online. It appears to be an indoctrination handbook that instructs mothers in the best methods to raise an extremist child.

The U.S-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) published the book “ahead of a new report condemning how children are being indoctrinated into radical Islam,” the Daily Mail reports. According to the Mail, the book advises that children be trained to play with toy guns, shown jihadi websites, read jihadi bedtime stories, and encouraged to participate in sports such as darts to improve their aim. It bans singing, dancing, and most sports, and features images of young boys holding guns, Islamic banners, even a severed head.

The guide was posted anonymously on a file-sharing site and its authors are unknown, though according to the Mail, “it is thought to be used by ISIS and other terror groups.”

Imagine my surprise to see that this lurid “revelation” is being disseminated by the propaganda outfit known as MEMRI.

If you don’t know MEMRI, this report from the Center for American Progress lays out the case:

The Middle East Media and Research Institute is a Middle Eastern press-monitoring agency created by former members of Israeli Defense Forces that supplies translations relied upon by many members of the Islamophobia network. The translation service was created in February 1998 as an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization “to inform the debate over U.S. policy in the Middle East.”

MEMRI offers research on media in the Arab world, which those in the Islamophobia network depend on to make the case that Islam is inherently violent and promotes extremism. Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer hails MEMRI as “a goldmine of translated material from the Arabic speaking world which really gives one some amazing insights into what our opponents in the war on terror are thinking.”

Frank Gaffney at the Center for Security Policy calls MEMRI “indispensable” and relies on its translations to exaggerate the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islam’s infiltration of America.

And the antiMuslim grassroots organization ACT! for America uses a MEMRI-supplied video of a Muslim woman being stoned in Sudan as evidence of the brutality of Sharia law.
The Middle East Forum’s Daniel Pipes also relies on MEMRI for his propaganda,as does Steve Emerson, executive director of The Investigative Project, who also serves as a director at MEMRI.

Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik cited MEMRI 16 times in his manifesto.

MEMRI was founded by Israeli-born, American academic Meyrav Wurmser, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and Col. Yigal Carmon, who spent more than 20 years in the Israeli intelligence and served as a terrorism adviser to two of Israel’s prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin. Wurmser co-authored the 1996 report, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” prepared for then-incoming Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
which suggested reshaping Israel’s strategic environment in the Middle East by abandoning the traditional “land for peace” negotiations with Palestinians and proposing the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

MEMRI is respected in some circles for its work to combat hate language and anti-Semitism,10 but it is also criticized for its selective translations. The institute contends that it highlights moderate Muslim voices on its Reform blog. Yet MEMRI’s selective translations of Arab media fan the flames of Islamophobia. MEMRI’s editorial bias in its selection of media sources creates the impression that Arab media is full of anti-Western bias and urges Muslims in the West to commit acts of violence and terrorism.

One case in point: A sample of the videos on the front page of MEMRITV.org’s “Islamists in the West” section shows 19 new videos with topics ranging from “Belgian Islamist Abou Imran, of Shariah Belgium: We Will Conquer the White House, Europe Will Be Dominated by Islam” to “American Jihadist Operating From Somalia, Abu Mansour Al-Amriki, Calls to Attack America, in Two New Jihadi Songs – ‘Send Me A Cruise,’ and ‘Make Jihad with Me.’” Problem is, of the
19 videos—including the two listed above—list “The Internet” as the source, instead of any verifiable news source.

Or consider George Washington University Professor Marc Lynch’s response to MEMRI’s 2004 report that Osama bin Laden promised to only attack American states that voted for George W. Bush. Lynch wrote that “MEMRI is cherry-picking a couple of statements on fringe websites to support its own, highly partisan, interpretation. Actually, to be totally clear, they are relying on ONE statement on ONE radical website, which could have been posted by ANYBODY.”

Indeed, MEMRI is plagued by accusations that it selectively translates television news clips from the Muslim world. Former CIA case officer Vince Cannistraro has said that “they (MEMRI) are selective and act as propagandists for their political point of view, which is the extreme right of Likud.” Laila Lalami, writing in The Nation, states that MEMRI “consistently picks the most violent, hateful rubbish it can find, translates it and distributes it in e-mail newsletters to media and members of Congress in Washington.”

Most disturbingly, the translations found in the inflammatory, antiMuslim documentary “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” were provided by MEMRI. The film’s website also features MEMRI as a resource under the link for “Radical Islam and Terrorism Today,” which demonstrates once again how important MEMRI’s translations are for Islamophobic propaganda in the United States. The Clarion Fund was responsible for producing and disseminating the anti-Muslim movie to 28 battleground states in 2008.

It’s impossible to know where this “report” really comes from. And for the moment it seems to be confined to the fever swamps of the right wing. But let’s just say that when babies become the focus it’s time for your skeptical antennae to be deployed. I’m sure you all recall this:

Every big media event needs what journalists and flacks alike refer to as “the hook.” An ideal hook becomes the central element of a story that makes it newsworthy, evokes a strong emotional response, and sticks in the memory. In the case of the Gulf War, the “hook” was invented by Hill & Knowlton. In style, substance and mode of delivery, it bore an uncanny resemblance to England’s World War I hearings that accused German soldiers of killing babies.

On October 10, 1990, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus held a hearing on Capitol Hill which provided the first opportunity for formal presentations of Iraqi human rights violations. Outwardly, the hearing resembled an official congressional proceeding, but appearances were deceiving. In reality, the Human Rights Caucus, chaired by California Democrat Tom Lantos and Illinois Republican John Porter, was simply an association of politicians. Lantos and Porter were also co-chairs of the Congressional Human Rights Foundation, a legally separate entity that occupied free office space valued at $3,000 a year in Hill & Knowlton’s Washington, DC office. Notwithstanding its congressional trappings, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus served as another Hill & Knowlton front group, which — like all front groups — used a noble-sounding name to disguise its true purpose.

Only a few astute observers noticed the hypocrisy in Hill & Knowlton’s use of the term “human rights.” One of those observers was John MacArthur, author of The Second Front, which remains the best book written about the manipulation of the news media during the Gulf War. In the fall of 1990, MacArthur reported, Hill & Knowlton’s Washington switchboard was simultaneously fielding calls for the Human Rights Foundation and for “government representatives of Indonesia, another H&K client. Like H&K client Turkey, Indonesia is a practitioner of naked aggression, having seized … the former Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1975. Since the annexation of East Timor, the Indonesian government has killed, by conservative estimate, about 100,000 inhabitants of the region.”

MacArthur also noticed another telling detail about the October 1990 hearings: “The Human Rights Caucus is not a committee of congress, and therefore it is unencumbered by the legal accouterments that would make a witness hesitate before he or she lied. … Lying under oath in front of a congressional committee is a crime; lying from under the cover of anonymity to a caucus is merely public relations.”

[T]he most emotionally moving testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. According to the Caucus, Nayirah’s full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait. Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. “I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital,” Nayirah said. “While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where … babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”

Three months passed between Nayirah’s testimony and the start of the war. During those months, the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. “Of all the accusations made against the dictator,” MacArthur observed, “none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City.”

At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait’s Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also failed to reveal that H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even the Kuwaitis’ own investigators later confirmed was false testimony.

If you click on the Fox News link at the beginning of this post you can see this jihadi baby story in all its glory, including alleged pictures of a 2 year old posed with a gun. It’s not enough that ISIS decapitates western journalists and aid workers or engages in mass murder. Now it is attacking the very foundation of civilization by interfering in the relationship between mother and baby and teaching an entire generation to be monsters.

It could be true. But considering the history of the group that allegedly found it — and the history of “baby propaganda” — it’s fair to question if they might just be fibbing a bit. It’s what they do.

And I won’t even mention this other little issue of weapons in the hands of babies. The jihadi pot meets the All-American kettle before they even leave the playpen these days.

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“Republicans would cut this nation in half and call it recovery…”

by digby

I think this was probably the most electrifying speech I ever heard in real time:

Speechwriter Andrei Cherny writes:

A hundred years from now, if there is one speech that people will study and remember from a Democratic politician in the last quarter of the 20th century, it will rightly be Cuomo’s 1984 address. It is hard to overstate the impact it had on a generation of the party’s speechwriters, strategists and policy thinkers. You can see it clearly in New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s campaign against the “two New Yorks” and John Edwards’ description of the “two Americas.” After learning of Cuomo’s passing, Jon Favreau — President Obama’s chief speechwriter for most of his presidency — commented on Twitter that the “1984 Convention speech is in my top five of all time.” The same, it is safe to say, goes for almost every Democratic politician and speechwriter. And, aside from its rhetoric, the formative power of Cuomo’s call silently shapes debates over the party’s strategy and future to this day.

And then he points out that the speech was all about celebrating Democratic achievements of the past and not about the future, which he claims has crippled liberal politics ever since. I can’t say that I agree. It was a beautiful, soaring speech that made people want to belong to this tribe of average working citizens engaged in a great democratic experiment. I think we need more of that, not less. Instead, what we’ve gotten for years from most Democrats is a laundry list of goals and a litany of 10 point plans to “improve the economy” and other abstract concepts. There are some politicians who make that work — Bill Clinton in particular. But it’s rare. For the most part Democratic rhetoric has either been a dry socket or an empty exercise in feel good, self-love sloganeering. Cuomo’s rhetoric was something special.

RIP.

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Between the twin peaks of progress

by digby

Krugman is well worth reading today especially in light of some of the fluff I’ve been reading about how the world is getting so much better in every way that we complainers need to stifle it. Krugman’s analysis is a bit more nuanced and explains why the statistics don’t reflect the very real feelings of anxiety and displacement so many are experiencing:

In 2014, soaring inequality in advanced nations finally received the attention it deserved, as Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” became a surprise (and deserving) best seller. The usual suspects are still in well-paid denial, but, to everyone else, it is now obvious that income and wealth are more concentrated at the very top than they have been since the Gilded Age — and the trend shows no sign of letting up.

But that’s a story about developments within nations, and, therefore, incomplete. You really want to supplement Piketty-style analysis with a global view, and when you do, I’d argue, you get a better sense of the good, the bad and the potentially very ugly of the world we live in.

So let me suggest that you look at a remarkable chart of income gains around the world produced by Branko Milanovic of the City University of New York Graduate Center (which I will be joining this summer).

What Mr. Milanovic shows is that income growth since the fall of the Berlin Wall has been a “twin peaks” story. Incomes have, of course, soared at the top, as the world’s elite becomes ever richer. But there have also been huge gains for what we might call the global middle — largely consisting of the rising middle classes of China and India.

And let’s be clear: Income growth in emerging nations has produced huge gains in human welfare, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of desperate poverty and giving them a chance for a better life.

Now for the bad news: Between these twin peaks — the ever-richer global elite and the rising Chinese middle class — lies what we might call the valley of despond: Incomes have grown slowly, if at all, for people around the 20th percentile of the world income distribution. Who are these people? Basically, the advanced-country working classes. And although Mr. Milanovic’s data only go up through 2008, we can be sure that this group has done even worse since then, wracked by the effects of high unemployment, stagnating wages, and austerity policies.

Furthermore, the travails of workers in rich countries are, in important ways, the flip side of the gains above and below them. Competition from emerging-economy exports has surely been a factor depressing wages in wealthier nations, although probably not the dominant force. More important, soaring incomes at the top were achieved, in large part, by squeezing those below: by cutting wages, slashing benefits, crushing unions, and diverting a rising share of national resources to financial wheeling and dealing.

And I think Krugman is right to be worried about this:

So who speaks for those left behind in this twin-peaked world? You might have expected conventional parties of the left to take a populist stance on behalf of their domestic working classes. But mostly what you get instead — from leaders ranging from François Hollande of France to Ed Milliband of Britain to, yes, President Obama — is awkward mumbling. (Mr. Obama has, in fact, done a lot to help working Americans, but he’s remarkably bad at making his own case.)

The problem with these conventional leaders, I’d argue, is that they’re afraid to challenge elite priorities, in particular the obsession with budget deficits, for fear of being considered irresponsible. And that leaves the field open for unconventional leaders — some of them seriously scary — who are willing to address the anger and despair of ordinary citizens.
[…]
All of this suggests some uncomfortable historical analogies. Remember, this is the second time we’ve had a global financial crisis followed by a prolonged worldwide slump. Then, as now, any effective response to the crisis was blocked by elite demands for balanced budgets and stable currencies. And the eventual result was to deliver power into the hands of people who were, shall we say, not very nice.

The right is addressing the anxieties of this group of nervous working citizens. And they are addressing it in the usual destructive way — targeting minorities and foreigners. As he says, this empowers people who are “not very nice.”

I understand that the world is, in general, more prosperous than a century ago. But the way the wealth and power is being disbursed is setting the table for something potentially very dangerous. You’d think the last century would have taught that lesson for all time but apparently it didn’t.

By their outrage, ye shall know them
By Tom Sullivan

Something Amanda Marcotte wrote parenthetically on New Year’s Eve caught my attention. On Christmas, Neil deGrasse Tyson typed out this Tweet most of you have already seen:

On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 25, 2014

“War on Christmas” soldiers were like boxers in their corner, gripping the ropes and bouncing on their toes, just waiting for the bell to ring. Tyson’s Tweet knocked the big chip off their shoulders, and out they came. Marcotte wrote:

Right-wing Christians, already primed to be hostile to anyone who values evidence and facts over myths about the supernatural, claimed that Tyson was deliberately provoking them. (Why they allowed themselves to be provoked, if this is what they believe, remains a mystery.) Odds are it was just Tyson being Tyson, grabbing any opportunity he can to educate people about science and push people to ask questions and learn more about the world. The ugly reaction from right-wing Christians only served to make them look close-minded and afraid of learning new things, which Tyson later pointed out on Twitter, writing, “Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.”

Why they allowed themselves to be provoked, if this is what they believe, remains a mystery.

Indeed. In my experience, the more confident you are in your opinions, the less threatened you are by others’ views. As Jefferson wrote, “But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” That is, what’s it to me what you believe? Then again, if everyone adopted Jefferson’s attitude, Fox News’ business model would collapse like the derivatives market in 2008.

If their god is God (as Yul Brynner might say), why do they feel it necessary to defend the Creator of the Universe from Neil deGrasse Tyson? Presumably, God is perfectly capable of taking care of himself, and is even less threatened by what Darwin Tyson thinks than Jefferson would be. Unless (as you guessed), it’s not God who is threatened. To borrow from Matthew’s gospel, by their outrage, ye shall know them.

Okay, but we can say the same of many on the left — always spoiling for a fight with conservative opponents, eager to vanquish their adversaries with the power of their supposed superior command of the facts, and way too eager to humiliate them. It’s a guilty pleasure that reinforces the worst “elitist” stereotypes of the left. While it may be intellectually satisfying to engage in such verbal combat, it likely won’t win friends and influence voters. As the saying goes, “You don’t have to attend every argument to which you are invited.” Leaping into a fight when baited is not a sign of strength.

A close friend once related how at a meeting of her condo owners’ association, some guy verbally attacked her when she asked for clarification on a new rule. I’ll never forget her reply. It was almost Zen.

“Didn’t you read the memo?” he snarled.

Keeping her cool, she turned to him in front of the crowd and asked calmly, “Do you have a need to pick a fight with me tonight?”

He withered and slumped back into his chair.

Respect

by digby