About those speeding Iranian boats, Charlie

I wonder what Charlie Gibson has to say about this story after he so willingly acted like a propagandist for President Bush?

From ABC News:

Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship. [...]

The Navy never said specifically where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited.

Today, the spokesperson for the U.S. admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet clarified to ABC News that the threat may have come from the Iranian boats, or it may have come from somewhere else.

We're saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there," said the spokesperson. "It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by.

Yipes, I sure am glad Charlie's not in a position to push "the button" based on someone else's hearsay.

UPDATE: Juan Cole has a post that explains this incident in great detail. He said it's looking more and more like a serious error if not a Republican Party fabrication. Imagine that.

Charles Gibson - Propagandist

Did you happen to see ABC World News last night? Charles Gibson introduced a segment of film showing Iranian swift boats confronting our naval ships in the Persian Gulf, and he went on to report that Bush called the incident an "act of provocation." Gibson should have stopped there and let the film roll, instead he went on to say "provocation was an understatement," as the film would show. (I couldn't find a transcript or video of that clip. I'll keep trying.)

The minute those words left Charlie's mouth my husband and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Iran was trying to provoke the US Navy and we were completely innocent? I don't think so.

Neither does David Lindorff, investigative reporter, who asked, What Is This ‘Iranian Provocation’ BS?

Not one news story about this week’s latest chapter in the administration’s ongoing effort to gin up a crazy war with Iran–the so-called “provocation” caused by Iranian naval speedboats approaching within 200 meters of a US destroyer–mentioned that the US, which sits some 7500 miles away from Iran, has sent a whole fully-armed armada into the Persian Gulf just off Iran’s coast.

Or that the Vice President actually flew out to an aircraft carrier that was part of that US armada, and threatened, from the flight deck, to have the US massively attack Iran.

Just who is provoking whom where?

See my point? Now consider this:

Imagine, for a moment, that Iran had sent its navy to patrol in the Gulf of Mexico, in international waters just off of the coasts of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, and that its leader flew out to one of those ships and threatened to take out America’s oil infrastructure.

How do you think the US government would react? How do you think the American people would react?

Do you think the US would send naval vessels out to provokingly sail close to Iranian ships? Do you think the US might do more than that and maybe sink those ships? (Especially if at that very moment Iranian special forces were operating inside the US, creating havoc and supporting subversive elements, as US special forces are already doing in Iran.)

I'm pretty certain we'd bomb them into oblivion (that's been our MO in the past), but here's the part that Charles Gibson might care to consider:

I’m not saying that Iran’s decision to move aggressively to challenge US naval power off their shores is necessarily the wisest move, but at least American journalists and editors ought to have the decency and ethics to point out to readers and viewers that it is the US, not the Iranians, that are provoking things here. [emphasis added]

That's the same point Ron Paul futilely tried to make during the ABC News New Hampshire Debate last weekend. Ironically, Charles Gibson moderated that night and allowed the debate to turn into a free for all. It was like watching a panel of guests on Fox News beat up on each other the way the Republican candidates shouted over Ron Paul and refused to let him talk. This is what Paul tried to say that night:

PAUL: I'm as concerned about the nature of the threat of terrorism as anybody, if not more so. But they don't attack us because we're free and prosperous.

And there all radicals in all elements, in all religions that will resort to violence. But if we don't understand that the reaction is, is because we invade their countries and occupy their countries, we have bases in their country -- and we haven't done it just since 9/11, but we have done that a long time.

I mean, it was the Air Force base in Saudi Arabia before 9/11 that was given as the excuse.

If we don't understand that, we can't win this war against terrorism.

I'm no fan of Ron Paul, but I agree with him on this point, and it bothers me to no end that the media willingly portrays the U.S. as an innocent victim. I've also lost all respect for anchors like Gibson because, as Lindorff summed it up, "our domestic news organizations are playing the willing propagandists here as willingly as did Pravda or TASS in the old Soviet Union." I thought our country and the people who represent us were better than that.

(Cross-posted at BFM)

Why does corporate America hate us?

Early primary voters are choosing the candidates with populist messages - Obama, Edwards and Huckabee. Corporate America took notice and they're not too happy.

Commerce vows to punish anti-business candidates

Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business.

"We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed," chamber President Tom Donohue said.

Nice. Voters are concerned about an economy that borders on recession, a weak record of job creation, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, declining home values and growing health care crisis, but the chamber isn't worried about our concerns - they're only worried about protecting their shareholders and CEO's.

Reacting to what it sees as a potentially hostile political climate, Donohue said, the chamber will seek to punish candidates who target business interests with their rhetoric or policy proposals, including congressional and state-level candidates.

Although Donohue shied away from precise figures, he indicated that his organization would spend in excess of the approximately $60 million it spent in the last presidential cycle.

No words of sympathy for workers. No promise from corporate America that they'll work to improve workers' living standards. No thank you for the record high productivity levels. Nothing. Just derision and a promise to bite the butts of the candidates we support until they bleed.

Thanks, Mr. Donohue. You just helped push more voters toward the populist candidates.

How monkeys and men are similar

This might interest some of you guys. According to a primatologist who studied 50 long-tailed macaques for the past 20 months, monkeys treat sex as a commodity.

[Dr. Michael] Gumert found after a male grooms a female, the likelihood that she will engage in sexual activity with the male was about three times more than if the grooming had not occurred.

And as with other commodities, the value of sex is affected by supply and demand factors: A male would spend more time grooming a female if there were fewer females in the vicinity.

"And when the female supply is higher, the male spends less time on grooming ... The mating actually becomes cheaper depending on the market," Gumert said.

Hmm...does this prove men evolved from monkeys? Or maybe it proves women of all species can make monkeys out of men. I'm just saying...

What goes around, comes around

This was in yesterday's Financial Times

Everybody’s thoughts may be on Iowa, so maybe it is appropriate to spare one for George W. Bush, entering the last year of his presidency. In so doing, there is no reason to be charitable.

I thought it was worth highlighting that statement. It shows how little respect the rest of the world has for Bush. There are no kind words for him because he hasn't left the world a better place.

Sadly, there are no kind words for our country either. This is how the Toronto Star described us in a recent article: Welcome to Third World, USA

Apparently, the Wall Street Journal insulted Canada in the mid-1990s by calling them "an honorary Third World country." Now that the tables have turned, they're more than happy to reciprocate.

Ironically, the U.S. today has many more features in common with Third World status than Canada ever did back in the mid-1990s.

What is usually meant by a Third World economy? A half-century ago, the term was associated with the economically underdeveloped countries of Africa, Asia, South America and Oceania. The common characteristics of these Third World countries were high levels of poverty, income inequality, high birth rates and an economic dependence upon the advanced countries. Third World countries were simply not as industrialized or technologically advanced as Western countries.

But what are some of the distinguishing characteristics of contemporary Third World countries? They go beyond these nations’ fiscal position or undue concentration on natural resource exports.

The glaring features today include poverty, lack of democratic institutions, controlling oligarchies and the unequal distribution of income and wealth. In other words, the few enjoy a rich lifestyle while the many share subpar incomes and poverty.

Another characteristic of Third World countries is that a major portion of their fiscal expenditures is allocated to the military. In many Third World countries, the military is controlled by an elite or a small collection of the wealthy.

Finally, in many Third World countries one finds that leadership is passed from one generation to the next, often via a close relative.

Check, check and check. They also point out that there's an ideological difference between us and other countries:

[...] most Western democracies see the elimination or reduction of economic inequality as a good idea. Indeed, it is a generally accepted principle that the underlying causes of economic inequality based on such non-economic differences as race, gender, or geography should also be minimized or eliminated.

In other words, there is a strong predilection in most Western countries to level the economic playing field as much as possible. This seems not to be the case in the United States. [emphasis added]

This is our country after decades of Republican control and two terms under Bush. No wonder "change" resonated with the voters in Iowa yesterday.

Should the Iowa Caucus Influence Us?

Today is caucus day in Iowa. Real people will have the first say in who they think should become our next president. Should what they say influence our decision when it comes time for us to vote? Because Iowans are first, does that mean they're smarter than us and know better?

Political analyst Larry Sabato believes we need to stay focused in reality.

[...] the more immediate need is for all of us to keep in mind legitimate questions about Iowa's system as we watch the results stream in this evening. The press' breathless pronouncements about the "winners" and "losers" should be tempered somewhat by another reality--the deep flaws inherent in Iowa's over-hyped caucuses.

Sabato feels the (1) the caucuses this year are way too early; (2) the caucuses and the state are unrepresentative of the broader electorate; and (3) the rules of the caucuses raise real questions about fairness.

This is what he says about the timing:

Have you met anyone who thinks it's a good idea to start the process two days after New Year's, with campaigning having peaked over the Christmas holidays? Let's remember why this has happened: Iowa and New Hampshire absolutely insisted upon going first, as always. Isn't that a little bit greedy? Aren't there 48 other equal states?

The lack of representativeness:

Iowa, like New Hampshire, is overwhelmingly white and disproportionately rural. African-Americans and Hispanics in the Hawkeye State, for example, number just 2 percent and 3 percent of the population, respectively, and 38 percent of Iowans are located in rural areas. In the nation as a whole, nearly 25 percent of the population is African-American or Hispanic, and a mere 21 percent of U.S. citizens are found in rural localities. New Hampshire is even worse than Iowa, with a population that is 0.7 percent black, 1.7 percent Hispanic, and 41 percent rural. In the Democratic Party--the home of 90 percent of African-Americans and about two-thirds of Hispanics--the disparity is especially significant. The two first states to vote often determine one or both party nominees, yet racial and ethnic minorities will have played a tiny role.

And the unfair caucus rules:

Let's keep in mind that the Iowa caucus requires a great deal from all participants, not least a full evening devoted to travel and meeting. The time commitment discourages many from joining in. Iowa's population is about 3 million, of which approximately 2 million are registered voters. The news media are full of stories about an expected "record" turnout tonight. And what will that record amount to? In both parties combined, there may be as many as 250,000 people showing up for the caucuses, or 12 percent of the registered voters. Therefore 88 percent of Iowa's registered population won't be seen or heard from on caucus night.

Iowa gains monetarily from being first (this has been the most expensive campaign in Iowa history), but beyond that their influence in shaping the presidential campaign shouldn't be taken too seriously. Besides, the winners of caucuses in Iowa have gone on to win the presidency only twice since the caucuses started in 1972: Jimmy Carter in 1976 and George W. Bush in 2000. And neither of those choices turned out to be so good for the country.

The Flint sit-down strike's role in history

The anniversary of the Great Flint Sit Down Strike was December 30. The strike took place in 1936 and is important because it resulted in General Motors' recognition of the UAW as a bargaining agent. For the next 41 days, Christine at Blogging for Michigan will be writing a series of posts describing what life was like during the strike. Christine asks the following:

Feel free to comment, or not, but I do hope you'll at least spend a minute thinking about it. Let it become part of who you are ... carry it with you, and pull it out when someone starts twaddling on about the right to work for less. If you really care about the future of the working men and women of this country, you'll do your best to understand their past.

I have a post over there too that reminds everyone it's important to understand the past. The Flint sit-down strike is a history lesson about the birth of unionization. For instance, what was the auto industry like prior to the Great Depression? Historian Stephen Sears described it as follows:

Before the Great Depression, unionism was in truth not much of an issue in Detroit. The vast labor army recruited during the auto boom of the twenties — white dirt farmers, poor city dwellers, southern blacks, recent immigrants — was docile and innocent of trade-union experience. Any labor grievances were defused by pay scales higher than those in most other industries and by a system of “welfare capitalism” (group insurance, savings programs, housing subsidies, recreational facilities, and the like) in which General Motors was a pioneer. Openshop Detroit had little to fear from the nation’s largest union, the American Federation of Labor. The craft-minded AFL devoted itself to horizontal unionism—organizing all the machinists, for example, regardless of industry. It studiously ignored industrial unionism, the vertical organization of the unskilled or semiskilled workers within a particular industry such as autos, steel, or rubber.

Then the Depression hit and everything changed.

[...] In the early 1930's Detroit auto workers found themselves powerless as the industry collapsed like a punctured balloon. Welfare capitalism was silent on job security. Wages and work time were slashed. As layoffs mounted, workers with ten or twenty years’ experience discovered that their seniority counted for nothing; it counted for nothing, either, in the call-backs that marked an upturn in auto sales beginning in 1933. Assembly lines were speeded up mercilessly to raise productivity and restore profit levels. Bitter men protested. “You might call yourself a man if you was on the street,” a Fisher Body worker recalled, “but as soon as you went through the door and punched your card, you was nothing more or less than a robot. ” “It takes your guts out, that line. The speed-up, that’s the trouble,” another said. “You should see him come home at night, him and the rest of the men … ,” a Flint auto worker’s wife testified. “So tired like they was dead.… And then at night in bed, he shakes, his whole body, he shakes. …”

The auto workers saw unionism and the strike as their only hope of redressing the balance. Stop and think about the courage those workers showed. As wizardkitten pointed out at BFM, "the fact that they did this in the middle of the Depression is astounding."

Sears described the gains the workers made like this:

Victory in the Flint sit-down by no means ended the discontents of the auto worker. Yet now, for the first time, he could envision himself as something more than simply an insignificant part of a great impersonal machine; as “Solidarity” phrased it, the union had made him strong. “Even if we got not one damn thing out of it other than that,” a Fisher Body worker said, “we at least had a right to open our mouths without fear.” [emphasis added]

Unions are more than just bargaining units for better wages and benefits. They give workers a voice. That's something you can't put a dollar sign on.

Canada post-NAFTA: An era of economic insecurity

Americans aren't the only ones unhappy with NAFTA. A new study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reaches a similar conclusion: Free trade has failed to live up to its promises.

Twenty years after Canada signed the Free Trade Agreement its biggest boosters have grown wealthier but promises of better jobs and rising living standards fell short, says a study released by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The Canada-US Free Trade Agreement was signed on January 2, 1988. The study examines what’s happened since: It takes a sample of 41 Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) member companies – the leading supporter of free trade – and finds they shrank their workforce by 19.6% while their revenues grew by 127%.

“Its promoters said free trade would create more and better jobs but that promise was clearly hollow,” says the study’s author, CCPA Executive Director Bruce Campbell. “There are fewer jobs today in the traded goods sector than there was before free trade.”

“And contrary to the CCCE promise of better public services and social programs under free trade, governments slashed programs by 26% -- more than six times deeper than the OECD average – largely at the urging of lobby groups like the CCCE.”

Among the study’s key findings, between 1987 and 2006:

The 41 companies’ combined revenue grew from $142 billion to $310 billion while they shrank their combined workforce by over 118,000.

The Big Three automakers shrank their Canadian workforce by over 50%--from 87,626 to 43,000. Their revenue grew by 70%, from $38.9 billion to $67.3 billion.

Despite the massive Alberta oil boom, the three major oil companies in the sample cut their combined workforce by almost one-third, from 22,500 to 15,428. Their revenues soared from $13.7 billion to $53.4 billion--a 290% rise.

Corporate profits are at a 40-year high, but Canadian workers’ wage share of the economy has fallen steadily.

Only the richest 5% of income earners saw rapid growth in their inflation-adjusted incomes from 1992-2004.

[all emphasis added]

Shrinking workforces, corporate profits at record highs, falling wages and rising inequality. Canada's experience under NAFTA pretty much mirrors our own. Free trade did create some new jobs over the past 20 years, but about one third of them were in the services sector at lower average wages than those lost. Sound familiar?

Poverty threatens our domestic tranquillity

The LA Times is running a series of editorials on the values and issues they feel will shape the 2008 election, i.e. the environment, liberty and justice, etc. Today, they focused on our country's domestic tranquillity, which they believe is being tested by new challenges, chief among them persistent poverty and the fraying of our connective infrastructure. It's pretty good stuff, especially the part about poverty. Here's an excerpt:

If tranquillity is best assured by "a more equal distribution" of the nation's wealth, we have much to fear. Our schools are faltering; our healthcare system leaves millions without access to doctors. Many are homeless or face the loss of homes. Some seethe at illegal immigrants who compete with Americans for jobs. In our America, 60 million people survive on $7 a day.

As we contemplate the coming election, we seek a president who understands that the unchecked spread of poverty is not a natural condition but rather a failure of government, and that action is required. Democrat John Edwards has been the most ardent anti-poverty crusader in the campaign; his ideas include strengthening labor laws, stimulating job creation and distributing housing vouchers for poor families that could be used anywhere, not just in government housing. The latter proposal alone would vastly expand shelter for those in need. The rest of the Democratic field offers little in the way of ingenuity, opting instead for the obvious observation that money spent in Iraq could better help America's poor.

On the Republican side, lack of specificity is matched by conspicuous indifference. When the GOP candidates were invited to debate poverty at Morgan State University in September, not one of the then-front-runners attended; present were Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul and Alan Keyes. Now a leading contender, Huckabee frames fighting poverty as a "pro-life" position; more constructively, he also addresses issues such as prison reform. Other Republicans have done meaningful anti-poverty work -- John McCain in housing and Mitt Romney in healthcare.

Although these candidates present ideas that might contribute at the margins, none goes far enough. Here are some ideas we'd like to hear them discuss:

President Bush came to office on a promise of "compassionate conservatism," but in housing, as in so many other areas, he's proved far more conservative than compassionate. His administration has sought, for instance, to cut Section 8 housing vouchers by 850,000; his successor should not only replenish the voucher program but add to it. There is no poverty worse than homelessness.

The next president should support and pay for early childhood programs such as Head Start; he or she also should endorse tax breaks for college students and their parents. Low-income students would benefit if community college tuition, in particular, were tax-deductible. And here's a proposal we would welcome: federal assistance for states educating the majority of the nation's illegal immigrants. Education can lift a poor person into prosperity; the government owes its people this chance to raise themselves.

Free trade is an engine of growth and jobs and thus opportunity. Yet open markets bring dislocation, and for the worker whose plant moves to Mexico, it is cold comfort that jobs are being created abroad. For Democrats especially, this last issue is a trying one. President Clinton was a champion of free trade and a supporter of NAFTA -- this page supported it then and still does. Today's candidates, however, are less enthusiastic. Edwards blames the pact for sending 1 million jobs abroad. Sen. Barack Obama calls for it to be "renegotiated." Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton says it should be "fixed." Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich veers into absurdity by proposing to scrap NAFTA and withdraw from the World Trade Organization.

Our goal should not be to abandon free trade but rather to make it work -- for the economy and also for the poor.

These are good ideas that I'd like to hear discussed too, but will it change anything? The candidates will say whatever they think will get them votes. Bush is a prime example of that. People really believed he would be "compassionate." I guess the best we can do is vote our conscience and hope the next president really does care about poverty and inequality. That pretty much rules out all Republicans.

Merry Christmas

You may believe Jesus is "the reason for the season" or you may believe in Santa Claus. Whatever you believe is fine with me. I don't want to fight. I don't want a "war on Christmas." In fact, what I do want is peace on earth, but that looks impossible for the immediate future, so I'll simply wish everyone a Christmas day filled with love, peace of mind and goodwill.

I also wanted to share a couple pictures of my granddaughter Gracie with you because I think children exemplify the unconditional love of Jesus - and in my opinion, that love is the true spirit of Christmas.

I hope she brings a smile to your face and lightens your spirits like she does mine.

Merry Christmas and God bless.