This is our Fault

Over the past several weeks there have been eight murders of polio workers in Northwest Pakistan. Until recently medical workers were off limits for militant groups. Then earlier this year the United States did something incredibly stupid. By using a fake vaccination mission to spy on bin Laden the United States made all aid workers legitimate targets.

This is not to say that militant groups are targeting them just because of the CIA mission, rather it gave them an excuse. Prior to now violence against medical aid workers was rare simply because it would bring condemnation even from supporters of the militants. Now it is easier for them to get away with it, since trust in the medical workers has evaporated.

Empire is not without cost. When the United States projects its power around the world there are trade offs at home and abroad. In order to verify the bin Laden was in that compound we needed this mission. Its cost is eight dead medical workers and hundreds of children who would have benefited from the vaccination program. Was it worth it?

When you pry them from our cold dead hands

How the rest of the world sees US gun laws

A sure fire way to confuse a visitor from another country is start a discussion about United States gun control laws. They will most likely go through several stage of before giving up understanding our laws. First is confusion, they will either not understand what is meant by "federalism" or will not understand the politics surrounding gun control legislation (try explaining the gun show loophole)/ Next is denial. The individual will refuse to believe that the US has little to no gun regulation and that many states are working to loosen regulations. Then there will be comprehension of the fact that the US does not have any gun control as such. Finally there will be anger/condescension about how ridiculous the entire situation is.

For Americans this may seem a little odd. This is because we are used to living in a nation that has a few gun regulations and those that do exist are patchwork at best. Part of the problem is the federal system, whereby the national government has little ability to regulate commerce within states. States are thereby allowed to change their laws regulating gun purchases and permits to laughably low standards. This in turn negates gun control efforts in nearby states. Most nations in the developed world do not have a federal model, and those that do have a much stronger central government. Additionally confusion comes from the fact that the United States is the only developed nation that does not require individual licensing before purchasing firearms. Furthermore we are the only developed nation that does not register and keep track of firearms.

This has led to incredibly high levels of gun deaths in the United States relative to the rest of the OECD. The United States is an extreme outlier. Beyond that however this data makes a strong case for gun regulation and control. The graph clearly shows a correlation between higher gun ownership per capita and higher number of gun deaths. This holds true domestically in the United States, several studies have shown clear links between gun ownership and homicide rates. There is also strong evidence that gun control reduces the number of gun deaths.

From the outside the lack of gun control in the US makes no sense. Not only are we unique in our lack of controls, we are also unique in ignoring the data on our mistake.

Its time for change

There is no argument that can be made for the possession of guns that outweighs the sorrow, misery and pain that they cause. Guns have only one use and that is to kill. Many times that is hunting, but often it is a fellow human being. Furthermore, assault weapons like the one used on Friday have no function other than to kill people. Its time to ban assault weapons and extended clips in this country, if for no other reason than to show that we put the lives of children ahead of the paranoid fantasies of the right.

31,076-People killed by guns in 2010

19,382-People who committed suicide using a gun

8% of these deaths are of children less than 6 years old



References-Tom Toles, http://smartgunlaws.org/gun-deaths-and-injuries-statistics/

Private Empire?

                                             The true beneficiaries of empire

Today Dan Drezner posits and interesting question, Is the United States the worst empire ever?

His basic argument is recycled from an earlier article, basically saying that US intervention abroad is hardly ever successful. Overall I think he is correct, but only from a particular viewpoint. Drezner, like a good realist, only views profit from the prospective of the state, or state actors.

This is the wrong way to conceive the United States empire. It is far more revealing to view it from the standpoint of an empire dedicated to private profit. United States economic policy is decidedly neo-liberal is style. As I stated earlier the goal of neo-liberalism is to take public resources and us them for private profit. If we apply this viewpoint to the United States empire a new picture emerges. It doesn't matter that Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan are military failures, because large amounts of public money were funneled to private contractors. For example the no bid contracts that were given to Halliburton and other contractors in Iraq. Similar stories have emerged from other US conflicts. In addition to direct subsidies to contractors, wars subsidize military production, which, in the United States is private industry. Overall war is an extremely effective method of funneling state funds to private individuals. So it doesn't matter if every occupation from now till the collapse of the United States is a failure, from the view of private business they will all be a payday.

Tom Friedman thinks Egypt is a tiger

Friedman likes to pretend he is Marco Polo, 

with similar levels of cultural understanding

Thomas Friedman has become a living punchline. Everyone who knows anything about world politics views his surface skimming and anecdotes (which for some reason are always tom Friedman clones) as shameful. What is even worse is that he is still a weekly contributor to the New York Times.

This week, he bring his centrist, third way crap to Egypt.

First lets start with the premise, that Egypt is going to fall apart in the near future. What makes these protests different than those that brought down Mubarak  Or the ones earlier this fall? Last I checked Egypt is still on a bumpy twisting road toward democracy. There are much to find fault with in Friedman's prose, but the worst thing about his writing is that he writes four sentences when one will do. In the first three paragraphs there are two basic ideas; that Egypt is cracking up and that the protests are driven by fears of dictatorship not religion. To both of which we can safely reply, No Shit Sherlock! It takes Friedman 250 words to say two things, he doesn't even expand on them, just to state the idea. However, it isnt until the fifth paragraph that the essay goes off the rails

Whenever anyone asked me what I saw in Tahrir Square during that original revolution, I told them I saw a tiger that had been living in a 5-by-8 cage for 60 years get released. And there are three things I can tell you about the tiger: 1) Tiger is never going back in that cage; 2) Do not try to ride tiger for your own narrow purposes or party because this tiger only serves Egypt as a whole; 3) Tiger only eats beef. He has been fed every dog food lie in the Arabic language for 60 years, so don’t try doing it again.

Do any of you associate tigers with Egypt? Of Course Not! There are no tigers in Egypt and no one associates them with Egypt. Also none of these statements enlighten about the situation in Egypt in any way. His metaphor is so strained that by point three he needs to write an sentence explaining what the hell he means. We are then treated to a Friedman Anecdote (tm).

Ahmed Hassan, 26, is one of the original Tahrir rebels. He comes from the poor Shubra el-Kheima neighborhood, where his mother sold vegetables. I think he spoke for many of his generation when he told me the other day

At least hes not a taxi driver. Friedman concludes with this nugget of wisdom,

It will be saved only if the opposition here respects that the Muslim Brotherhood won the election fairly — and resists its excesses not with boycotts (or dreams of a coup) but with better ideas that win the public to the opposition’s side. And it will be saved only if Morsi respects that elections are not winner-take-all, especially in a society that is still defining its new identity, and stops grabbing authority and starts earning it. Otherwise, it will be all fall down.

In other words, everyone needs to calm down and work toward democracy. So generic it shames white bread.  What was the point of reading this article again?

Serious

There is no joke in this post. Everyone should read this post at FP and think about how our culture makes suicide simpler for those suffering from depression. Guns make suicide much easier, currently 55% of the gun deaths in the US are from suicide. About half of all suicides in the United States make us of a gun, the next closest cause is a quarter of that.

Please read this and consider what you can do to help
There will be a humorous post later today.

Uninformed Opinions

Dear Washington Post,

Please calm the fuck down!

Really, I realize you had a massive crush on Saakashvili, but hes going to be alright I promise. No black clad thugs wielding AK-47s are going to burst into the presidential palace anytime soon.

Now that's out of the way we can talk about the content of the article. The article talks about the 20 odd opposition political leaders that the recently installed government in Tbilisi have arrested since taking power. And my do the editors get the vapors from that,

As long as he is imprisoning opposition leaders and seeking to monopolize power, Georgia’s new leader should not be welcome in Washington.

 The problem is that many of these ministers and opposition leaders probably are guilty of crime and electoral fraud. Prior to the election Georgian Dream (the new governing party) asserted on several occasions that their offices were being spied on and their phones tapped. I do believe we had a president resign in similar circumstances. Additionally many of these arrests were based on the recent prison abuse scandal that most likely toppled President Saakashvili's party from power. Finally these are just arrests, its not like they were summarily executed or given show trials. In the coming weeks we will see if the Georgian judiciary, all of which was appointed by Saakashvili, is willing to convict their former coworkers. My guess is we'll have a few high profile convictions to assuage Georgian Dream and the public, and a bunch of acquittals.

But this is likely to be unpersuasive to the editors of WaPo, at least until they get ride of their rose tinted goggles about Saakashvili,

Mr. Saakashvili and his team have given Georgia an extraordinary boost toward joining the Western democracies — modernizing the economy, greatly reducing corruption and attracting billions in foreign investment. Now they have held a truly competitive election and agreed to peacefully hand over power to the winners. Mr. Ivanishvili was able to exploit popular frustration with government failings — including torture in the prison system and high unemployment. But Mr. Saakashvili has left a democratic legacy; the United States and European Union should insist that the new regime sustain and build on it.

Seriously WaPo he's never going to return your calls. Get over it.

Our Continuing Parade of Very Serious People

Less dangerous than two men on this list!

The top 10 finishes off with a three way tie: a former anti-gay bigot, a former austerity hawk, and a former climate change denier. FP literally gave them the spot for no longer being assholes. How do I get that gig?

Onward and upward.

#11 is a climate scientist, I think FP has been taken in by the hoax! Oh noes!

#12 Angela Merkel the Chancellor trying her damnedest to starve as many Greeks as possible. Good choice FP, it shows that you are indeed Very Serious about debt in various countries *nudge nudge wink wink*

Numbers 13 and 14 get you a longer rant! Hooray!  Its Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, who apparently, "Almost single-handedly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have wrenched the world's attention toward the apocalyptic potential of a nuclear Iran."  Never mind the grammar of that sentence (two-people doing something single handedly ) its assertion isn't even true. People have been warning about a nuclear Iran since the mid-90s and the UN adopted a resolution telling Iran to halt its enrichment five years ago. Also please forget that there was serious discussion of a military strike on Iran during the Bush administration!

#14-16 are pretty boring, some more Israelis, the Fed, and Pussy Riot

#17 and 18 however are truly horrifying. "If Adm. William McRaven has turned hunting terrorists into an art form, Abraham Karem is the man who provided him with the paintbrush." That's right folks its the two men most responsible for our drone war! Imperialism forever! These two men have caused more civilian deaths between the two of them than the US infantry on the ground in Afghanistan. More American citizens have been killed by drone attacks in 2012 than shark attacks. That's right these men are more dangerous than wars and sharks put together!

#19 is two Syrian revolutionaries. Now we can get back to ignoring all the people killed there.

#20 Ends with Mario Draghi, yet another European determined to make Greeks suffer.

There's your Top 20 serious world thinkers, as determined by FP. Enjoy. 

Off With Their Heads!

                                                        A good start

I hate royalty, I hate monarchies, and I especially hate the idea of royal blood. The very idea of Monarchy and inherited power is antithetical to democracy and populism.

Even though the British crown no longer has any power, the symbolism of their existence is an affront to the ideals of democracy. Why should the Queen and her representatives in the dominions have the ability to disband parliament, above the desires of the people. This power was exploited twice by Stephen Harper in Canada to maintain his position as Prime Minister. Beyond the politics of the Monarchy, why should a small group of people in Britain be born into a life of luxury and wealth simply by virtue of their parentage? But that's for the British to decide, not me.

For American's to like the Monarchy, however, is a travesty. We fought two wars against those insane, German monarchs. The fact that the American media fawns over the royalty is horrific. We should be throwing eggs at those idiots, not feting their birth!

In conclusion, fuck Kate Middleton, and fuck her overprivileged whelp!

I Actually Discuss Communism

It is a sad day for international socialism. The government of Cyprus is negotiating a 17.5 billion Euro bailout for its banks. No self-respecting communist party should stand for this.

The current governing party of Cyprus, AKEL, or the Progressive Party of Working People, is an avowedly socialist party. Pretty obviously not a socialist initiative to bailout private bankers who made bad investments in Greece. Ideally the AKEL party would use this money to take nationalize the banks, or at the least to assert administrative control. Unfortunately this bailout will be funded and controlled by the European Union. This in of itself is a betrayal of AKEL's platform, as the party is moderately Euroskeptical  When the parliament voted to join the European Union, the AKEL voted in favor, but expressed reservations. The deal also requires that the government privatize assets in order to raise money and cut future costs. It is unknown how deep these cuts will be in the final deal.

Looking at this from a theoretical perspective, forced liquidation of assets was almost inevitable. For those of you who haven't read much about the practice and implementation of Neoliberalism, I would recommend David Harvey's book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. In short Neoliberalism in practice forces governments to transfer wealth from public ownership to private ownership. Over the short term this stimulates growth, but is not sustainable as it has rapid loss in marginal returns. Neoliberalism in Europe has been limited by the strength of socialism and workers movements. A European Union imposed liquidation is a way to avoid this problem and impose Neoliberal policies without the consent of the governed. On a broader note, the destruction of socialism in those few countries where it still exists is inevitable  Small scale socialism cannot exist in the broader context of world-capitalism.

A sad, but inevitable, end for the Socialists of Cyprus.

There are Idiots Everywhere

Apparently Donald Trump isn't the only blowhard with ridiculous hair who opines on things he knows nothing about. This week London Mayor Boris Johnson advocated that the UK radically alter its relationship to the EU.

Johnson is of the opinion that the UK should minimize its political involvement while remaining integrated with the single market. Anyone who knows anything about the EU will tell you this is ludicrous on its face. The EU is set up as an organization where political integration and economic integration go hand in hand. Advancement and integration in one area reinforces integration in the other. The biggest crisis facing the EU today, the Eurozone Crisis, was brought about by an imbalance between these two integrative strategies. Deep economic integration without political integration allowed massive borrowing (governmental and private) in peripheral countries. When this bubble burst it did not allow these nations to devalue their currency or take any steps to fix the problem. Greater political integration would have prevented the crisis in the first place.

Boris Johnson wants to ignore the history of the EU, and recent experience, in order to further his political career. He realizes that Skepticism is on the rise in Britain and is looking to capitalize on it. While this is not, on its own, necessarily bad, when adopted as national policy it will eventually lead to a UK exit from the EU. Currently the British government is pursuing Mr. Johnson's strategy to its own detriment.

It is not possible to leave the political union without leaving the economic union. If Britain leaves the EU it would be disastrous  Britain has become increasingly dependent on the continent for trade, this is what drove it toward the EU in the first place. Threatening the cooperation and stability of the EU is dangerous and foolhardy, it is well past time that British politicians accept the reality of the EU.

I am Proved Right

The Senate Republicans have failed to ratify the UN treaty on the rights of the disabled that Rick Santorum was so up in arms about. Honestly this is par for the course for Republicans. They are deeply skeptical of anything that sounds like internationalism.

Treaties that are explicitly bilateral in nature have some hope of passing, like the START 2 treaty Obama signed. Treaties proposed by international organizations, however, have no chance. This is not new to the Republican party. The UN treaty on the rights of the child was scuttled in a similar matter 17 years ago. That time the arguments put forward by the Republican Party were very similar. Parents rights over the child would be infringed. In that case it was the right of parents to beat their children. In both cases however this was just cover to stop the advancement of treaties linked to the UN. The Republican party in its modern incarnation is fundamentally based around skepticism of the UN and internationalism in general. In fact, since 1995 only two treaties negotiated by the UN have been ratified by the United States, The Convention on Cyber Crime and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Many times the Republicans don't even justify shooting down treaties, as in the case of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Fundamentally this indicates a party that is perfectly fine with its record of unilateralism and imperialism in the Bush administration. The Republican Party in its foreign policy reveals what it hides in its domestic policy; xenophobic, conspiratorial, and autocratic.

They're Coming for you Rick

I have made a unpleasant, but generally entertaining, habit of following my former Senator, Rick Santorum. Recently it has come to my attention that the good Senator is now writing  for the conspiracy website World Net Daily and has written his debut article. Lets see what so inspired Rick shall we.

A 2006 UN treaty intended to help protect disabled people. This should be fun. In the next sentence he trots his own disabled child out as a political tool,

"Certainly not my wife, Karen, and I, who are the parents of a very special child. Let me be clear: If I thought the U.S. Senate’s approval of this treaty would help our Bella or any disabled child here or in any other country, I would be vocally supporting it. " 

Classy. He then without evidence states that the US is the best country in the world for disabled people. This is actually unknowable since no one really ranks nations on disability aid. He then goes into some pretty standard pablum about how this means the US has no need to adopt this treaty. Fairly standard conservative opposition to international treaties. Then it takes a right turn.

But digging a bit deeper, the treaty has much darker and more troubling implications.The most offensive provision is found in Section 7 of the treaty dealing specifically with children with disabilities. That section reads: “In all actions concerning children with disabilities, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.”

Okay that seems pretty inoffensive language, I wonder where hes going with this.

In the case of our 4-year-old daughter, Bella, who has Trisomy 18, a condition that the medical literature says is “incompatible with life,” would her “best interest” be that she be allowed to die? Some would undoubtedly say so. 

Holy Shit! Did he just allege that Harry Reid and the United Nations want to murder his child!? I mean wow, that's just nuts, even for Rick Santorum. That's pretty much his only substantive argument against the treaty. That the UN will take away the parents right to decide what is best for the child and that would mean death panels  Never mind that it isn't true and there is no way anyone could argue that murder is in the best interest of a child.  As crazy as this is, it puts Santorum right in the main currents of right wing thought. How do I know this? Because the Republicans enshrined conspiracy theories about the UN in their national platform.

This is one of the two main political parties in the United States, and the man who was the biggest threat to Mitt Romney in the 2012 primary. I'm calling it now Santorum 2016.

Paul Ryan, Global Thinker

Paul Ryan's inclusion has to be the editorial staff of Foreign Policy trolling its readership. There is no other explanation for why he is included in this list, other than Glenn Beck broke into their offices the night before printing. The man has accomplished little to nothing in his tenure. Granted its a high profile nothing, but still nothing. Lets look at FP's reasoning shall we.

Repeal Obamacare. Lower income tax rates and simplify the tax code. Cut Medicaid by a third and make it a state-controlled block-grant program. Overhaul Medicare by giving beneficiaries money to buy competing public and private health plans. Reduce non-entitlement spending to its lowest level since World War II. And save $5 trillion in the process

 Too bad that all of that is malarkey. Paul Ryan's budget actually would have cost money. He relied on magic pixie dust to actually achieve reductions. Additionally, I may have missed it, but I'm pretty sure that budget went precisely nowhere. That means Paul Ryan, much vaunted wonk of the Republican Party, has actually had no impact on United States Policy. Moving on.

The article then discusses Paul Ryan as the Vice presidential candidate, which allows me once again to be a snarky bastard. The Romney/Ryan ticket not only lost the popular vote by four percent, he also lost his home state, and his own HOME TOWN!! No one likes him or his ideas. His budget was so thoroughly rejected on election day that Paul Ryan probably should stay away from math for awhile.

Foreign Policy has put an obvious huckster, who no one likes, as their number 8 most influential person in the world. I weep for international affairs journalism.

In Which Foreign Policy Redefines "Thinker"

So they start off strong with Aung San Suu Kyi, who helped bring democracy to Myanmar. Although, I am puzzled as to why they felt the need to include Thein Sein. Apparently the writers weren't sure either, in a page long description hes only substantively mentioned twice.

The next couple are pretty standard fare. Middle east reformer who helped bring democracy to Tunisia, a former president, and the current Secretary of State. Then at number four Foreign Policy we are given a hint of what lies ahead. Their number four global thinker is someone I guarantee none of you has ever heard of, Sebastian Thrun, a computer scientist. Can you guess what his all important thought is? Green energy sources? A brilliant new networking technology? No, whatever you said, its wrong. Hes working on robotic cars. That's right cars that drive themselves, which are still decades away from practical application are worthy of the top ten.

Number six is probably my favorite selection of the list, MalalaYousafzai. For those who don't know, she is a Pakistani school girl who was attacked for attending school by the Taliban. She survived the attack and became an advocate against the Taliban, and a rallying point for those pushing back against them. An incredible girl who is probably the most deserving "thinker" on the list.

Okay back to the stupid.

Number 7 is Barack Obama, not surprising since the sitting president is invariably in the top 10 somewhere. Next time surprise us Foreign Policy, rank the president dead last, just for a laugh.

Number 8 Paul Ryan. Seriously!? SERIOUSLY!? PAUL RYAN!
This is going to require its own post. Meet me back here in an hour after I calm down.

WaPo Pulls a Friedman

I know I said that you would all be left alone until Monday, but this Washington Post article is so very very bad as to require immediate response. In Gaza, surge of support for Hamas starts to fade.

"After prayers, men old enough to remember the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which began a decades-long occupation of Gaza, say Hamas has finally won a fight with Israel and should march on Tel Aviv." 

Excellent it contradicts its own headline by the third sentence. The article then opines that in spite of these old men there are others that think the opposite. Oh, and there is a nice lady with children in a refugee camp that the writer talked to who agrees. From this the Washington Post concludes,

many younger men, who grew up in the bitter decades after the first Palestinian uprising, ask what precisely Hamas accomplished during the eight-day confrontation last month.

Which they didn't actually provide any evidence for. The rest of the article continues to contradict the main assertion of the author. From the Hamas official to the cop on the beat, they all still like Hamas.

At least when Friedman quotes taxi drivers they actually agree with him.