In my upcoming book, The Uprising, one of the threads tying together the disparate forms of populism on both the Right and Left is a sense of confused frustration at a political system whose politicians employ disinformation and propaganda to make basic economic issues indecipherable. This has been no more obvious than on the issue of trade and globalization in the presidential race - and Hillary Clinton's latest television ad (which is also a standard part of her stump speech) shows exactly what I'm talking about.
Clinton is airing this advertisement in Indiana, bemoaning the closure of a defense contractor Magnequench's manufacturing plant in Valparaiso (she is also echoing this line in her stump speeches). Looking at the camera, she tells us she's upset that the 200 jobs that were sent to China, and that "now America's defense relies on Chinese spare parts." And then comes the kicker: She tells viewers that "George Bush could have stopped it, but he didn't."
Clinton is certainly right that it is a tragedy that 200 American jobs were killed in a corporate deal that also exported sensitive military technology to China. But she forgets to mention that it wasn't George Bush who was in the key position to stop it - it was Bill Clinton.
Back in 1995, a Chinese consortium, which included two Chinese state-owned companies, made a bid to take over Magnequench. Because the company makes key parts for smart bombs, the takeover had to be approved by the Clinton administration's Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States. Despite the national security and economic problems with selling off such critical manufacturing capacity to the Chinese - and despite the knowledge that such a deal would likely end in a domestic mass layoff - the Clinton administration approved the deal. This same deal - not surprisingly - paved the way for those 200 Indiana jobs and that sensitive military technology to be shipped to China.
The Clinton administration's move was not surprising. This was an administration whose NAFTA and China PNTR record more than proved it was intent on helping Big Money interests face as little resistance to international financial transactions as possible - consequences be damned. But the move was very controversial, raising the ire of key Hillary Clinton surrogate Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN). As the Los Angeles Times reported in 2005, "Bayh was particularly disturbed by the committee's decision in 1995 to approve a Chinese consortium's takeover of Magnequench Inc." In 2006, Bayh specifically slammed the Clinton administration's approval of the deal to the South Bend Tribune, saying "It's not smart to put ourselves in the position of relying on the Chinese for a critical component of a vital weapon system, and yet that is what the CFIUS process has allowed."
Unfortunately, as he has campaigned around Indiana with Hillary Clinton listening to her decry the Magenquench fiasco, Bayh has suddenly gone silent on the matter. Apparently, the power-worshiping pursuit of the vice presidency is enough to silence a senator whose constituents were so brazenly sold out and who had previously feigned outrage at the situation.
Luckily, at least some Hoosiers have not forgotten. Here's just one recent letter to the editor - this one from the Merrillville Post-Tribune on 4/17/08:
Hillary Clinton must have been hoping we Hoosiers have short memories when she decided to take Magnequench as her main talking point in Valparaiso. Apparently Evan Bayh didn't tell her the company was sold in 1995 to an investment group, Sextant, that included two Chinese companies. Her husband was president at the time and allowed this to happen.
In 1995, Beijing San Huan New Material High-Tech Inc. and China National Non-Ferrous Metals Import & Export Corp. partnered with an investment firm, the Sextant Group Inc., to acquire Magnequench.
The sale required approval from the Committee on Foreign Investments in the U.S. That committee is chaired by the secretary of the treasury. It was approved by the committee even though it was known that China National Non-Ferrous Metals is run under the State Council, an arm of the Chinese government.
That same year, it was found by the U.S. International Trade Commission that the San Huan New Materials was associated with the Chinese government and was engaged in illegal practices that harmed domestic industry.
The Clinton White House had one more chance in 1999 to stop the move when the Anderson, Ind., plant shut down and started shipping the equipment to China, but it failed to act. Can we really trust a Clinton not to let our jobs and national security go overseas?
Ed Dixon, Valparaiso
Certainly, some will attempt to argue that Hillary Clinton is not Bill Clinton and therefore she is perfectly justified in criticizing what happened in Valparaiso. But that strained logic crashes into two walls of truth.
First and foremost, Clinton has been citing her experience as a top economic and national security adviser in the Clinton administration as proof she's the most experienced candidate running. Either you take her at her world and you believe her experience in the administration was very real and very serious, or she's the most inexperienced person ever to make a major bid for president of the United States. I, for one, take her at her word about her experience - and that means it is perfectly appropriate - nay, essential - to ask her to answer for major decisions like the Clinton administration's approval of a deal shipping sensitive military technology to the Chinese and eliminating critical jobs in an economically hard-hit part of the heartland. And let's not forget - Hillary Clinton was an outspoken supporter of the China PNTR deal that helped smooth these kinds of deals for the long-haul.
Then there's the issue of blame. Even if you somehow don't think Clinton should have to answer for a major policy of the administration she brags about working in, it's hard to argue that she's being forthright by airing an ad blaming the deal on George Bush - and not on Bill Clinton. After all, her ad is saying that Bush should have used the Committee on Foreign Investments to stop the outsourcing - when Clinton should have used the very same Committee to stop the whole thing in the first place.
And that gets us back to the intense sense of outrage brewing all over the country. It is an outrage inherent in Ed Dixon's letter to the editor - one that suggests more and more Americans know they are be treated like fools. Politicians like Clinton head to Indiana airing ads pretending to care about economic havoc that they helped sow, denying their own long-record of advocating for NAFTA, then manufacture staged photo-ops so that the national press corps can snap pictures of them downing a shot of whiskey - as if that proves their down-home credentials. But more Americans have a sense that something is wrong - that these politicians are lying to them in a desperate attempt at election-year pandering.
It is this awakening and corresponding outrage that is now being channeled into a populist uprising on both the Right and Left. And as my book will show, that populism is not just impacting the presidential election, but changing American politics before our eyes.
Join the book club for David Sirota's upcoming book, The Uprising, due out on 5/27.
In a just-unearthed 1995 interview, Barack Obama describes America as "a land of strangers" where, despite all the rhetoric about the "browning of America," the melting pot remains a far-off dream for most -- with different communities as foreign to one another as distant countries. He discusses how white executives and inner-city residents alike must take more responsibility for themselves and each other.
But the truly amazing moment comes when Obama discusses his belief that his own personal salvation is inseparable from the redemption of the whole nation. You can hear Obama already fusing the personal and political into a spiritual mission like no other in modern politics. He's a man on fire.
The prolific veteran journalist Bill Thompson of Eye on Books has given Huffington Post readers the first chance to hear this extraordinary interview.
We live in a land of strangers. Blacks and whites don't know each other, they don't know their stories very well. Within my own family, even in the best-meaning family, there's a tremendous scope for misunderstanding, for suspicion, for fear. Until I understood what those fears were, what those hopes were, and what those dreams were, I think I was destined to - potentially, at least - repeat some of the mistakes that my parents and grandparents had made.
I talk a lot in the book about my attempts to renew the dream that both of my parents had. I worked as a community organizer in Chicago, [and] was very active in low-income neighborhoods working on issues of crime and education and employment, and seeing that in some ways certain portions of the African-American community are doing as bad, if not worse, and recognizing that my fate remained tied up with their fates. That my individual salvation is not going to come about without a collective salvation for the country.
I think that whether you are a white executive living out in the suburbs, who doesn't want to pay taxes to inner-city children for them to go to school, or you're an inner-city child who doesn't want to take responsibility for keeping your street safe and clean, both of those groups have to take some responsibility if we're going to get beyond the kinds of divisions that we face right now.
Iraqis Accuse Blackwater of Shredding Documents. WASHINGTON-Families of Iraqis who died in a shooting involving Blackwater Worldwide contractors accused the company Friday of shredding documents and destroying evidence.
Lawyers for the families made the accusations in court documents but identified the source of the information only as former employees. They said officials at the company’s North Carolina compound shredded documents related to [...] [CommonDreams.org » Headlines07]
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LAPORTE, Ind. — Asle Helgelien didn't believe Belle Gunness' claims that his brother, missing for months after answering the widow's lonely hearts ad, had left her northern Indiana farm for Chicago or maybe their native Norway.
Suspicious after a bank said his brother, Andrew, had cashed a $3,000 check _ a large sum in 1908 _ the South Dakota farmer came to LaPorte and discovered his brother's remains in a pit of household waste.
A century later, modern forensic scientists hope to solve once and for all what appears to have been a web of multiple murders, deceit, sex and money orchestrated by a woman dubbed Lady Bluebeard, after the fairy tale character who killed multiple wives and left their bodies in his castle.
Many locals believed Gunness staged her death in a farmhouse fire, 100 years ago Monday, before Asle Helgelien's arrival to cover up years spent poisoning and dismembering more than two dozen people.
Forensic anthropologist Andi Simmons grew up in the area east of Chicago hearing tales of the LaPorte black widow.
"There was always a sense of, what if she's still out there? What if she's lurking around," said Simmons, who decided to explore the case as part of her thesis.
Gunness probably killed at least 25 people and possibly as many as 33, Simmons said. The exact number isn't known because authorities never thoroughly searched the farm property after Helgelien found his brother's remains.
"When you look at the numbers, she should be a household name," Simmons said.
The official account was that Gunness died in the fire at age 48, along with three foster children and another woman who has not been identified.
Bruce Johnson, chairman of LaPorte's Gunness 100th Anniversary Committee, said some residents wish the story would fade away. But programs leading up to the anniversary of her death have drawn many who are eager to share their own tales.
John Olsen, 87, of nearby Schererville, said at a recent anniversary program that Gunness, a Norwegian immigrant, had a reputation among Norwegian families as a great foster mother.
He said Gunness took in his aunt, Jennie Olsen, at 7 months old after her mother died. Jennie decided to stay with Gunness when she got older, even after her father remarried.
"Jennie had many opportunities to come and join her siblings ... and went back to Belle because Belle was the only mother she had ever known," Olsen said. "And Belle gave her an excellent home."
However, Jennie Olsen's body was the second discovered when authorities began digging after the 1908 fire, and many believe she had been killed two years earlier because she uncovered her foster mother's secrets.
The woman arrived in Chicago from Norway in 1881 at age 21, and married three years later. After her first husband died, Gunness moved to LaPorte, where she met Peter Gunness. They married in April 1902, but he died later that year when a sausage grinder and jar of hot water fell on him.
In both cases, family members believed the husbands' deaths were suspicious, Johnson said. And in both cases, Gunness collected thousands in insurance money.
After Peter Gunness' death, his widow advertised in Midwestern Norwegian-language newspapers for a potential mate. One read: "A woman who owns a beautifully located and valuable farm in first class condition, wants a good and reliable man as partner in same. Some little cash is required and will be furnished first class security."
Though Gunness was a plain, 5-foot-8 woman who weighed as much as 280 pounds, her letters were eloquent, Johnson said.
"She wrote wonderful letters, very encouraging," he said. "She would tell them about how lovely LaPorte was."
The coroner declared Gunness dead after her dentures were found in the fire debris two weeks later. But many believe she paid someone to plant the dentures _ which Simmons said were found intact and not burned.
When authorities determined the fire was arson, suspicion turned to a handyman who had worked for Gunness and had been her lover. He was convicted of arson but acquitted of murder.
For a quarter of a century, Gunness sightings were reported all over the country.
The last came in 1931, when a woman named Esther Carlson died in Los Angeles while awaiting trial on charges she killed her employer. Carlson resembled Gunness, was about the same age, and there was no record of her before 1908, Simmons said.
Simmons' team exhumed a body believed to be Gunness' from a Chicago-area cemetery in November. The casket contained body parts from two children _ but they did not belong to the foster children reported to have died in the fire. They could be remains of other victims whose remains had been buried in the basement and were inadvertently scooped up in the ashes, Simmons said.
"Now we don't know whether we're adding two more people to our body count," she said.
Shouldn't we be honest about this?
Let's face it: The world "electability" s another term for "voter racism". In other words, would Barack Obama be able to get enough support to overcome the lingering bigotry in this country. It's a fair question, but if we're going to deal with it we need to face it head on.
Let's put it in perspective though. Whether it's Obama or Clinton who gets the nomination, he or she will not only make history, but will carry the added burden of oppression that is still with us.
Let's face it, the Republicans have a lock on both the racists and misogynists. There are so many devious ways to exploit prejudice.
Don't for a minute forget that any the passion of proud women or African-Americans, up next to the ugliness of threatened white males, uh, pales in comparison.
Remember Willy Horton? Or remember all the attention we paid to. Hillary's neckline? Yes there are all kinds of ways smarmy campaign operatives can obscure their appeals to our worst instincts and I guarantee you they will.
They already have, actually. On the Democratic side those in the Clinton camp keep who keep talking in code about Obama's race and then squeal in red-faced outrage when they're called out on it. Rest assured, that this is a preview of coming attractions.
Obama has to get over the illusion that the country is color-blind. We've made some progress, but not enough to get past the racial fears that unprincipled politicians can exploit, and will.
Last night, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia granted his first broad-based television interview, to Lesley Stahl on CBS’s 60 Minutes. There he explained that the torture of detainees does not violate the 8th Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” because, according to Scalia, torture is not used as punishment:
STAHL: If someone’s in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized, by a law enforcement person — if you listen to the expression “cruel and unusual punishment,” doesn’t that apply?
SCALIA: No. To the contrary. You think — Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don’t think so.
STAHL: Well I think if you’re in custody, and you have a policeman who’s taken you into custody–
SCALIA: And you say he’s punishing you? What’s he punishing you for? … When he’s hurting you in order to get information from you, you wouldn’t say he’s punishing you. What is he punishing you for?
Watch it:
Scalia’s parsing of the 8th Amendment blindly ignores reports showing that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was about torture and humiliation, not information-gathering. In 2004, the Washington Post reported MPs involved in the abuse “said detainees were beaten and sexually humiliated as punishment or for fun.” A recent New Yorker profile of>when they asked for ’special treatment’ was punishment: take away his mattress, keep him awake, take away his clothes.”
[I]t seems Justice Scalia has forgotten about the 5th Amendment’s guarantee of due process. Furthermore, a court holding a witness in contempt for refusing to cooperate with a judicial proceeding is, in fact, quite different than an interrogator resorting to physical abuse when a prisoner refuses to talk.
Scalia has repeatedly latched on to the “red herring” idea of a ticking time-bomb scenario to justify torture. He approvingly cites torture-happy Jack Bauer, the fictional star of “24,” and recently he declared it would be “absurd to say that you can[base ']Äôt stick something under the fingernails, smack them in the face.”
BENTONVILLE, Ark. — An inmate awaiting trial on a murder charge is suing the county, complaining he has lost more than 100 pounds because of the jailhouse menu.
Broderick Lloyd Laswell says he isn't happy that he's down to 308 pounds after eight months in the Benton County jail. He has filed a federal lawsuit complaining the jail doesn't provide inmates with enough food.
According to the suit, Laswell weighed 413 pounds when he was jailed in September. Police say he and a co-defendant fatally beat and stabbed a man, then set his home on fire.
"On several occasions I have started to do some exercising and my vision went blurry and I felt like I was going to pass out," Laswell wrote in his complaint. "About an hour after each meal my stomach starts to hurt and growl. I feel hungry again."
But Laswell then goes on to complain that he undertakes little vigorous activity.
"If we are in a small pod all day (and) do next to nothing for physical exercise, we should not lose weight," the suit says. "The only reason we lost weight in here is because we are literally being starved to death."
The suit also asks that the county be ordered to serve hot meals. The jail has served only cold food for years.
The meals, provided through Aramark Correctional Institution Services, average 3,000 calories a day, jail Capt. Hunter Petray told The Morning News of northwest Arkansas for a story Saturday.
A typical Western diet consists of 2,000 to 3,000 calories a day.
Laswell's suit was filed without a lawyer in U.S. District Court in Fayetteville.
Political pundits have likened Obama's oratory, its style and content, to that of Abraham Lincoln. Most recently, Gary Wills has compared Barack Obama's speech on race in America, "A More Perfect Union," with Abraham Lincoln's 1860 Cooper Union address. In fact, like most of Lincoln's great speeches, Obama's speech evokes history and broader political principles to address contemporary racial divisions. Its title too, which calls on ordinary American citizens to perfect their Union, is reminiscent of Lincoln's Civil War speeches. Like Lincoln, who was dismissed for being a "Black Republican" for opposing racial slavery, Obama ironically stands accused of playing the race card by Sean Wilentz, the Clintons' historian in residence, because he opposes the divisive politics of race.
More interestingly, the Democratic presidential nomination contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton bears some startling similarities to the 1860 Republican presidential race between Abraham Lincoln of Illinois and William Henry Seward of New York. In a series of strange historical coincidences, not only do the leading Democratic contenders for the presidency hail from the same states as their Republican predecessors but their political resumes are analogous too. Like Lincoln, who was a one term Congressman and who opposed the Mexican War of 1846-1848 as a land grab for slavery, Obama is a one term Senator and is known for his early opposition to the Iraq war. Like Lincoln, Obama is known for his soaring oratory and vision of change at a moment of crisis. Like Lincoln, voters view Obama as an unknown quantity but are inspired by him. Physically too, the tall and lanky Obama might well be an African American version of the man whose legacy he explicitly invoked when announcing his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois.
Clinton, on the other hand, looks a lot like Seward did in 1860. If anything, he was even more tested by national politics than she. Seward had been Governor of New York, the man behind the short-lived presidency of Zachary Taylor (1848-1850), and the Senator from New York in the 1850s. He was a leading voice of antislavery in Congress and reviled by southern Democrats on a regular basis. Compared to Lincoln, a small town lawyer, Seward, like Clinton, had been close to the White House, Congressional politics and was the more experienced and allegedly able candidate.
In 1860, however, the Republican nominating convention dumped Seward for the dark horse candidate, Abraham Lincoln. Seward commanded the loyalty of the party faithful but his lieutenants in the convention were completely out maneuvered by Lincoln's supporters from Illinois. The unexpected success of Barack Obama's presidential campaign strongly resembles the ultimate triumph of the Lincoln forces. Lincoln came from behind to defeat the front runner whose candidacy, like Clinton's, had an aura of inevitability about it until the very eve of the Republican convention.
A majority of Republicans in the convention viewed Seward, a veteran of many battles over slavery expansion in Congress, as too polarizing a figure. One of the biggest arguments against Hillary Clinton is precisely that she is too polarizing a figure. Over the years, Seward, like the Clintons, had made many political enemies, some within his own party. Some Republicans voted for Lincoln simply because they would rather not vote for Seward. Most Republicans went for Lincoln in 1860 because they wanted to broaden their party base and appeal to the less antislavery lower north. The solidly antislavery upper north was already in their column. That is same the argument that the Obama campaign is making now. No matter who is the Democratic presidential nominee, the reliably blue states will vote Democratic. But Obama might bring some red states and less partisan voters into the Democratic column. Here is the potential to create a new progressive majority that can shift the terms of political debate and transcend the politics of race. Just as Lincoln's election brought decades of slaveholder dominance of the federal government to an end, Obama can turn the tide on conservative dominance of political discourse in this country. Indeed, the Democratic party today is a counterpart to the mid-nineteenth century liberal Republican party, the party of Lincoln, and the Republican party today is a lot like its historical predecessor, the conservative Democratic party with its political base in the solid south.
During the Civil War, the tried and true Seward recommended negotiations with southern secessionists. It was the political novice, Lincoln, rather than Seward who comprehended the momentous nature of the war and moved toward emancipation, the arming of former slaves, and black citizenship. In the end, Seward and his pro-slavery southern Democratic detractors shared a common political world that Lincoln rejected. While John McCain and Hillary Clinton can vouch for each other's jingoistic patriotism, political experience and military toughness, Obama appeals in Lincoln's words, which Senator Edward Kennedy repeated in his endorsement of him, to the "better angels of our nature." Given the historical record, that might just be the quality that makes a great president.
INDIO, Calif. — Roger Waters brought Coachella to a close with an epic two-set performance that included playing all of "Dark Side of the Moon" and unleashing a giant inflated pig into the night sky.
The 64-year-old Waters, the third headliner of the three-day music festival following Prince and Jack Johnson, performed an elaborate, almost retrospective concert Sunday featuring music from throughout Pink Floyd's catalog.
Old photographs of the band often flashed across the screen behind Waters and his current band, which played songs from "The Wall," "Wish You Were Here" and "Animals," among other Floyd albums. They also played "Dark Side" in its entirety, culminating with the album's iconic triangle prism rising above the stage.
But Waters' biggest prop was an inflatable pig the size of a school bus that emerged while he played a version of "Pigs" from 1977's capitalism critique, "Animals."
The pig, which was led above the crowd from lines held on the ground, displayed the words "Don't be led to the slaughter" and a cartoon of Uncle Sam wielding two bloody cleavers. The other side read "Fear builds walls."
The underside of the pig simply read "Obama" with a checked ballot box alongside.
As Waters drew the song to a close, flame bursts exploded on the sides of the stage and the swine floated into the night sky. Waters said sadly and comically, "That's my pig."
The performance also included speaker towers placed around the outside of the crowd. Smoke machines funneled across the stage and over the audience, thickening the atmosphere.
This morning, <a href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/04/27/hillary_strangelove/";>the Boston Globe launched the most aggressive editorial broadside yet against statements made by Hillary Clinton last week on Good Morning America, where she promised to "totally obliterate" Iran if they attacked Israel, comparing the Senator to fictional film character "Doctor Strangelove" and calling her statements a "red line that should never be crossed."
While Clinton has hammered Obama for supporting military strikes in Pakistan, her comments on Iran are much more far-reaching. She seems not to realize that she undermined Iranian reformists and pragmatists. The Iranian people have been more favorable to America than any other in the Gulf region or the Middle East.
A presidential candidate who lightly commits to obliterating Iran - and, presumably, all the children, parents, and grandparents in Iran - should not be answering the White House phone at any time of day or night.
Meanwhile, over at CNN's Late Edition, Senator Diane Feinstein and Representative Pete Hoekstra were sounding bipartisan support for diplomatic tactics to be employed in dealing with Iran.
[WATCH.]
<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/27/hoekstra-iran-iraq/";>ThinkProgress goes on to point out that even the current Joint Chiefs of Staff nether expect nor recommend military action be taken against Iran, despite the recognition that the Iranians are continuing "to supply weapons and other support to extremists in Iraq." No word on whether this would change if Iran further extended their hostilities toward Israel.
