Is China Heading for Crisis?

With America's current political crisis sucking up most of the media attention, even as Trump strives to be an authoritarian ruler above the law, it is easy to forget that even dictatorships seem to have a maximum life expectancy and that nations like China, which seeks to hold a hegemony of Asia, have their own perils to face. While the Chinese regime is not as fossilized as that of the Soviet Union on the eve of its collapse, political strains are growing and not just in Hong Kong, a city state that exists as a sharp reminder of a dictatorial regimes limitations. Yes, China's leadership has a vision of where it wants the country to go in terms of economic power and influence, but the very prosperity that this will bring undermines dictatorial rule.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the growing difficulty China is experiencing in holding conflicting goals and desires under control.  How it all ends is anyone's guess.  Here are column excerpts:

China — or, rather, the Chinese regime — is in trouble. Tuesday’s gigantic parade in Beijing to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic looked like something out of the late Brezhnev era: endless military pomp and gray old men. Hong Kong is in its fourth straight month of protests, marked and stained by this week’s shooting of an unarmed teenage demonstrator. The Chinese economy is growing at its slowest rate in 27 years, even when going by the overstated official figures.

Meantime, capital is fleeing China — an estimated $1.2 trillion in the past decade — while foreign investors sour on Chinese markets. Beijing’s loudly touted Belt-and-Road initiative looks increasingly like a swamp of corruption, malinvestment and bad debt. Its retaliatory options in the face of Donald Trump’s trade war are bad and few. And General Secretary Xi Jinping has created a cult-of-personality dictatorship in a style unseen since Mao Zedong, China’s last disastrous emperor.

Remember the “Chinese Dream” — Xi’s vision of China as a modern, powerful, and “moderately well-off” state? Forget it. The current task for Chinese leadership is to avoid a full-blown nightmare of international isolation, economic decline, and domestic revolt.

The question is whether that’s still possible.

China’s presumptive trajectory once seemed clear. In domestic affairs: rapid economic reform; slow political opening. Lather, rinse, repeat. In international affairs: peaceful rise; burgeoning clout. It was to be a model of managed development, a Middle Kingdom fit for the 21st century.

That’s not what happened, for reasons that Chang and others saw coming long ago. Rapid growth is easy when labor and capital are plentiful and cheap. But most developing countries inevitably fall into what’s called the middle-income trap, when they no longer have the cost advantages of poor countries but haven’t yet acquired the legal, educational, or technological advantages of rich ones.

Beijing’s dilemmas go deeper. Economic reforms generate sudden riches that are ripe targets for extravagant graft, particularly by powerful state actors. Graft creates incentives for further self-dealing, which distorts economic decision-making and breeds public cynicism. . . . The result: more corruption, more cynicism, more repression. How long that can keep going is an open question.

[S]cholars such as Larry Diamond and Minxin Pei have noted that dictatorships tend to have a roughly 70-year lifespan. At some point, the revolutionary fervor that sustains the first generation of leaders and the will to power that sustains the second gives way to the policy failures, mounting discontents, outside shocks and inner doubts that prove the undoing of the third.

Especially when the regime experiences some kind of blunt trauma, either in the form of a foreign-policy fiasco, an economic shock, or a moral outrage. In its attempts to respond to Hong Kong’s protests, Beijing risks all three.

Accommodating the protesters’ demands, above all the granting of genuine universal suffrage, is the right thing to do, but introduces a democratic principle fatal to the regime’s self-preservation.

Hence the looming crisis. It could be defused, if Beijing guarantees amnesty for all nonviolent protesters and removes the troops it has brought in from the mainland in exchange for a meaningful process of negotiation. Or it could be “solved” through some form of hyper-aggressive policing that stops short of an outright massacre. But that only puts a lid on discontents that will continue to boil.

A policy of hoping the protesters discredit themselves or simply run out of steam shows no sign of working. A Tiananmen-style crackdown would underscore the regime’s brutishness and incompetence, destroy Hong Kong as a global financial capital, and spur China’s neighbors to arm to the teeth and draw closer to Washington.

But if the regime’s travails prove anything, it’s that China’s current despot is no more enlightened than despots elsewhere, and China’s people are no less eager to have what people have elsewhere: justice, fairness, rights, freedom from fear, freedom itself. In China’s looming crisis, the human condition shines through.

Is America really so exceptional?

One mindset that drives me to distraction is based on the belief that America is exceptional or, stated differently, the myth of American exceptionalism.  The far right and GOP love to talk about American exceptionalism, but Democrats fall for the propaganda as well.  Too often this translates into a smug sense of superiority and, worse yet, a refusal to recognize America's failings.  It has also been used as an excuse to justify America's sometimes less than pure motives.  With social mobility plummeting and wealth disparities soaring, is America really exceptional?  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the question.  Here are excerpts:

The most interesting fact to surface in the ensuing debate over “American exceptionalism” is that the phrase was first coined by Putin’s long-ago predecessor, Joseph Stalin. Its origins stretch back to 1927, when a prominent American communist, Jay Lovestone, suggested that capitalism was so advanced in the United States that it would preclude a communist revolution here. Stalin would have none of it, attacking “the heresy of American exceptionalism” and affirming the historical inevitability of Marx’s triumph of the proletariat.

Time hasn’t been kind to Marxism. Still, the underlying question remains: Is American exceptionalism just a self-congratulatory phrase or a demonstrable reality? The evidence is mixed.

If you examine opinion polls, you cannot miss the distinctiveness of some American attitudes. One standard question asks respondents to judge which is more important — “freedom to pursue life’s goals without state interference” or “state guarantees [that] nobody is in need.” By a 58 percent to 35 percent margin, Americans favored freedom over security, reported a 2011 Pew survey. In Europe, opinion was the opposite.

Historically, the American experiment was exceptional, as historian and conservative commentator Charles Murray shows in an elegant essay published by the American Enterprise Institute. The United States, writes Murray, was the “first nation in the world [to] translate an ideology of individual liberty into a governing creed.”

[M]ost Americans have considered their beliefs superior. What rankles Putin (and many Americans, too) is that the United States has used this sense of moral superiority as a pretext to throw its weight around the world. The truth is more complicated. U.S. foreign interventions have also reflected perceived self-interest, while moral reservations have often justified isolationism: Don’t get entangled with crazy foreigners. The public’s hostile reaction to a proposed use of military power in Syria suggests isolationism may be on the rise.

There’s also a widespread understanding that national ideals have often been violated (slavery and racial discrimination being the most glaring examples). Indeed, Americans themselves seem increasingly skeptical of exceptionalism. The 2011 Pew survey asked respondents to react to this statement: “Our people are not perfect but our culture is superior.” Only about half of Americans agreed, roughly the same as Germans and Spaniards. Significantly, 60 percent of Americans 50 and over agreed, while only 37 percent of those aged 18 to 29 did.

Still, these portents can be overdone. Compared to many, Americans are more optimistic, more individualistic, more confident of progress. What the late historian Richard Hofstadter once said remains true: “It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies, but to be one.”

What do readers think?

Today's Republicans And Their Antipathy Towards Democracy

Mixed throughout much of the hate and vitriol disseminated by today's Republican Party against those who are not whites, straight, conservative Christians - and according to Mitt Romney the 47% of Americans who are parasites - is a mindset that all others are not "real Americans."  So what does one do if you are a member in today's Republican Party?   You try to disenfranchise "those people" who do not look like you, think like you or subscribe to a fear and hate based version of Christianity.  In short, you try to distort democracy so that those you don't like cannot vote.  The GOP backed voter ID laws are a prime example.  Laws that seek to address a problem that doesn't exist and the real goals of which are to disenfranchise blacks, Hispanics, the poor, etc.  The people that per the GOP aren't "real Americans" and who I suspect Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and their "family values" Christofascist view as something less than fully human. Ana Marie Cox has a piece that looks at the GOP antipathy towards democracy where all citizens get to vote.  Here are excerpts:

The Drudge Report, which I've always considered more mischievous than malicious, gave "Unskewedpolls.com" some link love earlier this week. The site tinkers with the poll results of major firms by re-weighting them  . . . .

At their heart, Unskewed Polls express a pseudoscientific rationalization for a pre-existing belief: the mathematical equivalent of intelligent design. But the site represents more than just modern conservatism's skepticism about science; it underscores what has become a more animating and alarming concern – conservatives' distrust of democracy as a process.

This is nothing new, of course. . . . .  Anti-Federalists. . . . pushed successfully for the US constitution to mandate election of senators by state legislatures and not voters – a quaint affectation that was superseded by the 17th amendment in 1913.  There is a growing movement among Republican elected officials to repeal that amendment; among those advocates are five Republican Senate nominees.

However, it is one thing to wonder if the mass electorate can make good decisions and quite another to back-engineer the exclusion of a specific class of voters for the sake of a specific outcome. That, of course, is what voter ID laws do.

But voter ID laws are just a specific, particularly obvious example of a generalized contempt for voters. A better reflection of the mood: Romney's careless dismissal of 47% of America. The comment wasn't just callous and strategically idiotic (Karl Rove, who masterminded the GOP's outreach to "ungettable" voters, must have hurt his head banging it against the wall when he heard); it reflected also the apparently widespread presumption among GOP supporters that democracy is a zero-sum game – and that voters are motivated out of greed.

Republicans' assault on democracy (the voter ID laws, the repeal of the 17th amendment, the creeping disempowerment of women) is probably designed to scare those exact voters they want to disenfranchise as much as it is to legally disenfranchise them. Anti-voter ID activists often say that making someone believe their vote won't count is as effective as actually barring the vote.

So, you know, bring it on. It's not the 47% that needs to worry; it's Romney.

Conservative Wants to Disenfranchise Yonger Voters

Demonstrating that conservative professions of a love for democracy is lip service at best, the National Review’s Jonah Goldberg has admitted that he wants the voting age increased to disenfranchise younger voters.  While he won't say what age he wants the minimum voting age increased to, he confesses that in his view it should be "much higher."   In short he wants to be able to send young soldiers to their needless deaths in fool's errand wars like the Iraq War, but these individuals who represent cannon fodder for old white men should have no vote concerning the nation's course.  One could argue that given the current state of the country, one might better argue that its the elderly who ought to be disenfranchised. Think Progress looks at this latest far right batshitery.  Here are highlights:

The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg is claiming that 18-year-olds should be denied the right to vote because they are “so frickin’ stupid about so many things.” In a video first posted by the Daily Caller, Goldberg laments the culture’s obsession with youth and argues that conservatives should “beat out” young people’s belief that “socialism is better than capitalism.” Goldberg is the third National Review writer in two months to face controversy:

GOLDBERG: Personally, I think the voting age should be much, higher, not lower. I think it was a mistake to lower it to 18, to be brutally honest….[I]t is a simple fact of science that nothing correlates more with ignorance and stupidity than youth. We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young. And yet there’s this thing in this culture where, ‘Oh, young people are for it so it must be special.’ No, the reason young people are for it because they don’t know better. That’s why we call them young people. [...]
The fact that young people think socialism is better than capitalism. That’s proof of what social scientists call their stupidity and their ignorance. And that’s something that conservatives have to beat out of them. Either literally or figuratively as far as I’m concerned.

Federal Court Deals Blow to GOP Gerrymandering in Texas

For a party that claims to honor democracy and the integrity of the electoral system, the Republican Party goes to extreme lengths to limit the ability of minorities to vote - through new ID requirements and sometimes outright intimidation - and to gerrymander voting districts so as to neutralize minority populations who have little reason to vote Republican given the Party's efforts to often demonize them . Such behavior by the GOP is the norm here in Virginia. Texas is no different. But it appears that GOP efforts in Texas may be hitting a road block in the form of the federal courts which are poised to rewrite the GOP redistricting effort. Under the GOP plan, 3 out of 4 new Congressional seats would have tilted to the GOP and all GOP encumbrances would have held safe seats. The court plan would flip this outcome on its head. Here are some highlights from Politico:

A federal court-proposed map positions Democrats to gain as many as three congressional seats in Texas, dealing a sharp blow to Republicans who had hoped the state would help solidify their new majority.

Under the plan, Democrats could capture three of the four new seats Texas is gaining in the current round of reapportionment, and would be positioned to compete against one of the state’s freshman Republicans, Rep. Quico Canseco, whose southwestern Texas district would become considerably less GOP-friendly.

The interim plan was crafted by a San Antonio court, which was tasked with providing a congressional map until a Washington, D.C.-based court determines whether a Republican-drawn plan, approved by the state legislature earlier this year, adequately accommodates the state’s exploding Hispanic population. The Justice Department, along with several minority groups, instigated legal action earlier this year, alleging that the GOP blueprint dilutes minority voting strength.

The court-drafted map is a devastating reversal for Republicans, whose map would have positioned the GOP to win three of the state’s new seats and would have allowed each of the party’s 23 incumbents to run in safe districts.

“This is a big win for Democrats and minority groups in Texas,” said Matt Angle, director of the Texas Justice Fund, which helped craft the legal strategy combating the GOP plan.

Several other Republican-held districts would also be less safe under the interim plan. Veteran GOP Rep. Joe Barton would see his seat grow less Republican-friendly, as would the Galveston-area seat held by retiring GOP Rep. Ron Paul.

The proposed map is not final – Republicans will have until the end of this week to provide input and suggest changes before the plan is finalized. The interim plan was released just ahead of Monday’s opening of the filing period for candidates to declare their intentions to run in Texas races.

Oligrachy, American Style

The caption for this post is the title of a new column in the New York Times by Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman. As he has been doing for quite some time, Krugman focuses on the sad fact that the so-called American dream is becoming increasingly out of reach of most Americans as the nation quickly heads towards wealth disparities once found in banana republics and autocratic monarchies. The good news is that some folks seem to be finally waking up to this reality. Meanwhile, the oligarchy of the 1% of the population ranking in most of the advantages offered by the country tries to distort to distort the real picture. Heaven forbid that average people figure out that the 1% is living like Marie Antoinette (at left) and Louis XVI while the rest of us increasingly struggle to make ends meet. Here are some column highlights:

Inequality is back in the news, largely thanks to Occupy Wall Street, but with an assist from the Congressional Budget Office. And you know what that means: It’s time to roll out the obfuscators!

Pundits try to put a more benign face on the phenomenon, claiming that it’s not really the wealthy few versus the rest, it’s the educated versus the less educated.

So what you need to know is that all of these claims are basically attempts to obscure the stark reality: We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only.

The budget office laid out some of that stark reality in a recent report, which documented a sharp decline in the share of total income going to lower- and middle-income Americans. We still like to think of ourselves as a middle-class country. But with the bottom 80 percent of households now receiving less than half of total income, that’s a vision increasingly at odds with reality.

In response, the usual suspects have rolled out some familiar arguments: the data are flawed (they aren’t); the rich are an ever-changing group (not so); and so on. . . . . It’s a nice story, and a lot less disturbing than the picture of a nation in which a much smaller group of rich people is becoming increasingly dominant. But it’s not true.

[T]hese days workers with a college degree but no further degrees are less likely to get workplace health coverage than workers with only a high school degree were in 1979.


So who is getting the big gains? A very small, wealthy minority. The budget office report tells us that essentially all of the upward redistribution of income away from the bottom 80 percent has gone to the highest-income 1 percent of Americans.

[W]hy does this growing concentration of income and wealth in a few hands matter? Part of the answer is that rising inequality has meant a nation in which most families don’t share fully in economic growth. Another part of the answer is that once you realize just how much richer the rich have become, the argument that higher taxes on high incomes should be part of any long-run budget deal becomes a lot more compelling.

The larger answer, however, is that extreme concentration of income is incompatible with real democracy. Can anyone seriously deny that our political system is being warped by the influence of big money, and that the warping is getting worse as the wealth of a few grows ever larger?

As I noted yesterday, the America of my childhood and youth is gone and now much of "Old Europe" offers more social mobility than America.

What Happens if Assad Falls in Syria?

The news continues to be inundated with coverage of the military action that took out Bin Laden. But perhaps even more significant to the shape of politics and foreign affairs is the issue of what happens if Bashar al-Assad's regime follows the pattern of Tunisia and Egypt. Some say that the fall of Assad could trigger a civil war which could spread throughout the Middle East as minority Shiite governments are faced with an uprising of majority Sunni populations. Meanwhile, the violence continues and protesters do not appear willing to allow things to slide back to the old ways. I have long believed that once a population learns that things can be different - the Internet has made this far easier than in past decades - it is hard for dictators to put the genie back in the bottle. The USA definitely finds itself walking a tightrope. Here are highlights from a Washington Post story that looks at Syria and what might unfold:
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The toppling of the presidents in Tunisia and Egypt precipitated a tumult of revolutionary fervor that promises to transform the Middle East, but the potential collapse of the Syrian regime could wreak havoc of a very different kind.
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In Syria, the fall of President Bashar al-Assad would unleash a cataclysm of chaos, sectarian strife and extremism that spreads far beyond its borders, threatening not only the entrenched rulers already battling to hold at bay a clamor for democratic change but also the entire balance of power in the volatile region, analysts and experts say.
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“If the regime collapses you will have civil war and it will spread throughout the region,” engulfing Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and beyond, said Hilal Khashan, professor of political science at the American University of Beirut. “A collapse of the Syrian regime is a doomsday scenario for the entire Middle East.”
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Many believe that is why the international community, including the United States, has offered such a tempered response to the bloodshed in Syria, the latest Arab country to be swept up in the unrest roiling the region. NATO warplanes are bombing Libya to protect civilians there, but there have been no calls even for Assad to step aside, despite an increasingly violent crackdown by the Syrian military in which at least 550 people have died.
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Part of the problem is that so little is known about what would come next should Assad be ousted. Egypt and Tunisia took great leaps into uncertainty when their regimes fell, but in each case the army, a known quantity, asserted its independence and seized power to oversee the transition.
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In Syria, the army is so tightly bound to Assad’s Alawite clan that the fall of the regime would almost certainly lead to its disintegration, setting the stage for an Iraq-style implosion in which the state collapses, a majority seeks to exact revenge on a minority and regional powers pile in to assert their own interests, said Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma, who writes the blog Syria Comment.
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“For the Obama administration, the last thing they want, just at the time they’re withdrawing from Iraq, is a destabilized Syria that would lead to open season for jihadis to cross the border into Iraq,” said David Lesch, professor of Middle East history at Trinity University in Texas.
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Iraq’s own Shiite government also views with alarm the upheaval across the border, mindful that the collapse of Syria’s Shiite minority government would almost certainly herald the rise of a Sunni state on its doorstep, and perhaps renewed support for Sunni insurgents still resisting the Shiite ascendancy in Baghdad.
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To the north, Turkey is concerned about the potential aspirations of Syria’s Kurds, who could seek to assert their identity and claims to statehood as Iraq’s Kurds did after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
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And the Persian Gulf states, though long on frosty terms with Damascus, also are nervous about the prospect of sectarian conflict, which could leach into Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. For Saudi Arabia, there is also the worry that the assertion of Sunni power in Syria could inspire restive domestic Sunni radicals to intensify their opposition to the monarchy.
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Syrian activists bristle at the suggestion that their movement is dominated by Islamists, and say their revolution is no different from the one in Egypt, in which ordinary people spontaneously took to the streets to vent their frustrations with corruption, nepotism and the ruthlessness of the security forces. “I feel disgusted by how the superpowers make these calculations based on their own interests, while my own people are dying on the streets,” said Mohammed Ali Atassi, a prominent journalist and filmmaker currently in Beirut.
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With its long record of sponsoring multiple, shadowy extremist groups in pursuit of foreign policy goals, the Syrian regime is also in a position to unleash considerable chaos across the region should it feel unduly threatened, analysts say. And that, according to Khashan, the American University of Beirut professor, makes it unlikely the Syrian regime will fall. “Because, to tell the truth, no one wants it to fall, including Israel, the U.S. and the gulf states,” he said.

U.S. and Allied Forces Fire Back on Gadhafi's Forces

After the Chimperator's fools errand in Iraq I will concede that I am a bit gun shy on more additional U.S. involvement in the Middle East or North Africa. That said, I have real problems with the use of military forces against civilians and unconscionable brutality by a tyrant who shows signs of insanity and a total disregard for the lives of his people. At this point in time, I therefore hesitantly support the actions of the USA and its allies to stop the slaughter of civilians by megalomaniac Moammar Gadhafi. I shudder at the needless loss of lives and damage to Libya's infrastructure. It speaks volumes when a so-called leader is willing to murder civilians and destroy his country in order to maintain personal dictatorial power. CNN has these developments on events in Libya:
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Explosions and anti-aircraft fire thundered in the skies above Tripoli early Sunday, but it was not clear whether they resulted from another round of cruise missile attacks by allies determined to stop Moammar Gadhafi's offensive against Libyan opposition forces.
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American, French and British military forces, convinced that Gadhafi was not adhering to a United Nations-mandated cease-fire, hammered Libyan military positions with missiles and fighter jets in the first phase of an operation that will include enforcement of a no-fly zone.

More than 110 Tomahawk missiles fired from American and British ships and submarines hit about 20 Libyan air and missile defense targets in western portions of the country, U.S. Vice Adm. William Gortney said at a Pentagon briefing.
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The U.S. will conduct a damage assessment of the sites, which include SA-5 missiles and communications facilities. A senior U.S. military official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said the cruise missiles, which fly close to the ground or sea at about 550 miles per hour, landed near Misrata and Tripoli.
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The salvo, in an operation dubbed "Odyssey Dawn," was meant "to deny the Libyan regime from using force against its own people," said Gortney.
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U.S. Navy photos showed flashes of light and smoke funnels as missiles soared from a destroyer into the night sky.
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Earlier, French fighter jets deployed over Libya fired at a military vehicle Saturday, the first strike against Gadhafi's military forces, which earlier attacked the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.
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An eyewitness in Misrata said Gadhafi's forces are targeting fuel and power stations in an effort to make citizens believe the damage is being done by coalition forces. The eyewitness, who was not identified for security reasons, said people celebrated allied airstrikes on loyalist positions in the city. CNN could not verify the account.
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Shortly after the first missile attacks, U.S. President Barack Obama informed the American people of the efforts by a "broad coalition."
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"The use of force is not our first choice," the president said from Brasilia, Brazil. "It is not a choice I make lightly. But we cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his own people that there will be no mercy."
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I have little confidence in Obama. However, from the news reports I have seen to date, I believe that intervention in Libya is perhaps the right thing to do. I shudder to think what Gadhafi will to those deemed rebels should he prevail. Where it will all end is anyone's guess.

Saudi Arabia Sends Troops Into Bahrain

As most of the world sits transfixed watching the still unfolding disaster in Japan in horror, unsettling events are taking place in the Middle East. Namely, the Saudi autocrats sending troops into Bahrain to aid the Sunni monarchy in subduing the Shi'ite majority. Obviously, if things ignite further, the majority in Saudi Arabia may decide that a homegrown uprising is needed as well. Meanwhile, the USA, because of its own severe dependence on foreign oil and the need for bases to support Chimperator Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is left trying to walk a tight rope that may come back to bite it in the ass either way things play out in the longer term. Huffington Post looks at this development. It's a mess and the USA still has no longer term plan for energy independence. Here are some highlights:
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Saudi Arabia sent troops into Bahrain on Monday to help put down weeks of protests by the Shi'ite Muslim majority, a move opponents of the Sunni ruling family on the island called a declaration of war.
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Analysts saw the troop movement into Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, as a mark of concern in Saudi Arabia that concessions by the country's [Bahrain's] monarchy could inspire the conservative Sunni kingdom's own Shi'ite minority. . . .
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Saudi Arabia, which is worried about any spillover to restive Shi'ites in its own Eastern Province, the center of its oil industry.
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Bahraini opposition groups including the largest Shi'ite party Wefaq said the move was an attack on defenseless citizens. "We consider the entry of any soldier or military machinery into the Kingdom of Bahrain's air, sea or land territories a blatant occupation," they said in a statement.
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"This real threat about the entry of Saudi and other Gulf forces into Bahrain to confront the defenseless Bahraini people puts the Bahraini people in real danger and threatens them with an undeclared war by armed troops."
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Any intervention by Gulf Arab troops in Bahrain is highly sensitive on the island, where the Shi'ite Muslim majority complains of discrimination by the Sunni Muslim royal family. Most Gulf Arab ruling families are Sunni and intervention might encourage a response from non-Arab Iran, the main Shi'ite power in the region. Accusations already abound of Iranian backing for Shi'ite activists in Bahrain -- charges they deny.
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"The Bahraini unrest could potentially turn into regional sectarian violence that goes beyond the borders of the particular states concerned," said Ghanem Nuseibeh, partner at consultancy Cornerstone Global.
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Wefaq is calling for a new government and a constitutional monarchy that vests the judicial, executive and legislative authority with the people. A coalition of much smaller Shi'ite parties are calling for the overthrow of the monarchy -- demands that scare Sunnis who fear this would benefit Iran.
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Will the USA once again support brutal autocrats over rank and file citizens demanding a form of government based on the founding principles of America? Yes, principles such as freedom of speech, the right to free assembly - and maybe even freedom of religion.

The Arab Gdansk - An Autocracy Falls

Roger Cohen has a column in the New York Times that conjectures on where the popular overthrow of the despotic government of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali (pictured at right) in Tunis might lead in the rest of the Arab world. A world, except for the dominance of Islam rather than Christianity, that mirrors the type of government the extreme Christianists in the USA favor with centralized dictatorial power and at least outward strict religious fundamentalism. If one wants to know what a theocracy in this country would look like if the Tony Perkins and James Dobsons had their way, Saudi Arabia is perhaps the best model, although I'm not sure who the Christianists would want to take the throne. My money would be on Dobson since he surely has a large enough ego and plenty of groveling sheep like followers. Getting back to the Arab world, dictators and religious fundamentalism have retarded progress and modernity for years. The question now is whether a desire for freedom and opportunity will cause other populations to mirror the events in Tunisia and demand an overthrow of the fossilized regimes that benefit few but the ruling class. Here are highlights from Cohen's column:
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Now, the Tunisian dictator of 23 years, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, has fled to the mother lode of regional absolutism, Saudi Arabia, driven out by new social media and old-fashioned rage. Protesters communicating on Facebook and irked by what WikiLeaks had revealed of the Ben Ali family’s Caligula-like indulgence were roused to shatter the security state of yet another Arab despot.

The unseating through popular revolt of an Arab strongman is something new: It has already caused ripples from Amman to Cairo, from the Gulf to Tripoli — and it will cause more.
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This signal event, of still uncertain outcome, is long overdue. Arab regimes, many of them U.S. allies, have lost touch with young populations. Their ossified, repressive, nepotistic, corrupt systems have proved blind to the awakening stirred by satellite TV networks, Facebook posts, tweets, Web videos and bloggers.
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They have proved skilled only at provoking guffaws at their regular “elections” and fostering the rise of extreme Islamism among populations left with no refuge but religion. Their “stability” has been sustained at the price of paralysis. It has depended on a readiness to terrorize and torture. These Arab holdovers, moribund as the waxworks at Madame Tussauds, are ripe for transformation, the anciens régimes of 2011.
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The U.S. responsibility for this Arab failure has been significant: America has preferred the stable despot to the Islamist risk of democracy (despite the fact that the only likely remedy to the seductive illusion of political Islamism is the responsibility of government). It is now imperative that the Obama administration and the European Union stand behind Tunisia’s democratic forces.
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Last month, after a visit to Beirut, I wrote a column called “The captive Arab mind” about the psychological cost of repression in the region: the reflex of blaming others, the perception of conspiracies everywhere and the paralyzing fear of acting or thinking for oneself. Tunis can be Act One in the liberation of the Arab mind.
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Western double-standards in the supposed interest of Arab stability have proved a recipe for radicalization. The West should honor Tunisian bravery with some of its own. Dynasties rusting on their thrones are not the answer to Arab disquiet.
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Dictators, corrupt monarchs, Popes, and religious extremists of all faith have a common denominator - they all seek to crush out independent thought and logic. I hope logic and independent thinking win the day in Tunisia.

John Roberts’s America - The Buying of Elections

An op-ed in the New York Times looks at the unsettling tidal wave of money - some likely from overseas via the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which is only too happy to sell out American citizens - that has engulfed the political landscape. The reality is that democracy is increasingly for sale to the highest bidder - even if the public doesn't get to know who that bidder might be. The Citizens United decision of the Roberts Court has truly made politics more corrupted by money and some opportunists like Virginia Thomas, Justice Clarence Thomas' wife, no longer even try to appear impartial. With an unknown salary paid by unknown donors, Ms. Thomas has thumbed her nose at the long practice of federal judges and their wives avoiding political activities that give the appearance of impropriety, if not open bias. It's no coincidence that Thomas sided with the majority and opened the flood gates that are now enriching his wife and himself. Here are some column highlights:
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Colorado is ground zero for what’s happening in John Roberts’s America, competing for the dubious distinction of being the top state in the nation for spending by shadowy outside groups telling people how to vote.
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This gusher is courtesy of the 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision in January that allowed unlimited campaign spending by corporations and unions. That was the ruling, which will go down in infamy, where the court said that corporations had the same free speech rights as ordinary citizens.
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The illogic of that logic was always apparent. But now it’s overwhelming, and omnipresent. Your average voter can dash off a letter to the editor, or fire up a blog, or put up a yard sign — a nice fantasy of citizen democracy. Your corporate equal can spend $23 million (the outsider amount spent so far in Colorado) to bludgeon the electorate. And, with loopholes in the tax system, they can do it while making it virtually impossible to know who they are.
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Races in Colorado, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Washington state are being determined on K Street, by insurance, banking and oil industry groups hiding behind innocuous titles like Americans for Prosperity (right-wing billionaire David Koch) and Americans for Job Security (insurance giants), and by public employee unions.
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The court missed the reality of what would happen once the floodgates were opened to the deepest pockets of the biggest players. They turned back a century of fine-tuning the democracy, dating to Teddy Roosevelt’s 1907 curbs, through the Tillman Act, against Gilded Age dominance of elections. They focused on a fantasy.
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Here was the court’s prediction: “The appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.” Really? Perhaps the top complaint this year about the barrage of outside attack ads is that nobody knows who is behind them, which promotes the exact opposite of what the Roberts court predicted.
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As ugly as 2010 has been, the next election cycle, for president in 2012, will bring us a John Roberts’s America that will make this year look like a town hall meeting from a Rockwell painting.

Is Something Happening in Iran?

As regular readers know, I have some time been following the ongoing developments in Iran and I candidly hope that the growing grass roots opposition will ultimately succeed and over throw the Islamic dictatorship currently ruling Iran. Given the nation's fabulous history, it truly deserves something better than the current crop of religious extremists at the helm of the nation. Obviously, if the Islamic dictatorship - which has been supporting Islamic extremists throughout the Middle East - is overthrown, a major realignment of power and political activism will unfold across the Middle East, including in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan. While the USA seems to be doing nothing to support the opposition elements in Iran, one can only pray that these brave opponents to the current regime are successful in the long run. Here are some highlights from the Timesonline:

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Iran’s panicking regime is once again seeking to suppress the Green Movement by decapitating it. Just as it did after June’s hotly-disputed presidential election, it is arresting high-profile reformists, academics and journalists who support the opposition. It hesitates to detain Mir Hossein Mousavi lest millions of his supporters take to the streets, but it has locked up his brother-in-law and is widely suspected of killing his nephew. It cannot arrest Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel laureate, as she is abroad, but it has imprisoned her sister.
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The tactic will prove as futile now as it did in June. Decapitation will not work because the opposition is a bottom-up movement run not by Mr Mousavi or Mehdi Karroubi, its nominal leaders, but by its grassroots members. It is a massive campaign of civil disobedience.
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“Ahmadinejad, Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards still don’t get it,” said one Iranian academic. “The Green Movement is a decentralised popular front run by local cells and local leaderships across the country. The main opposition figures do not control it. They are spiritual leaders, but do not provide any direction in regard to demonstrations or slogans.” . . . . Iranians are doing these things not because they are told to, but because they choose to. For a reviled regime that rules by diktat, that has to bus in supporters to fill its rallies, that must be a difficult concept to grasp.
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Protests are now common not just in Tehran, but in conservative cities such as Mashad and Qom. The regime’s use of violence during the holy month of Muharram, its lack of respect for Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri after his recent death, and other sacriligious acts have eroded its support among the pious poor.
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One activist said: “Do Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and the elite of the Revolutionary Guards really think that I, or anyone else, after being beaten by the police, witnessing the murder of Iranians on the streets, hearing stories of rape and murder in the prisons, and knowing of electoral cheating, will ever remain passive and quiet? None of us will ever accept the rule of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei after what they have done.”

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God/Allah speed to the protesters and I hope they can bring down the dictatorship and install a democratic government by the own efforts - not those of an occupying power such as the USA is trying to do in Iraq.

Is Iran Reaching the Tipping Point?

As a history major and avid reader on Middle Eastern history from the time of Alexander the Great and earlier, I have followed current events in Iran with great interest just as I did the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran - a huge mistake, given the brutal regime that replaced his rule. The 1979 revolution also had a person connection since my uncle for whom I am named was heading up an engineering project in Iran when the Shah fell. Fortunately, he and other Americans with him were able to flee on foot across the border to escape capture by the Islamic revolutionaries. Things seem to be nearing a boiling point in Iran and now some are saying that the Islamic dictatorship is worse than the regime of the Shah. One of those saying this is Mehdi Karroubi - an influential Iranian reformist politician, democracy activist, mojtahed, and chairman of the National Trust Party. He was Chairman of the parliament from 1989 to 1992 and 2000 to 2004, and a presidential candidate in the 2005 and 2009 presidential elections. Via a YouTube clip, Karroubi stated today as follows:
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It's now seven months since they so shamelessly violated the Constitution, principles of the Republic and Ayatollah Khomeini's repeated mantra of: "the people's vote is the last word" on the day of the election. During these months they responded to the peaceful protests of our nation by illegal mass arrests, show trials, horrific violence in custody and killings. [...] Sadly these illegal actions were repeated in the last 10 days.
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Last night, they attacked the very spot Ayatollah Khomeini gave his speeches from for years when former President Khatami was giving a speech. And today from early in the morning, on the day of Ashura of all days, they acted with devastating violence, injuring many and killing a few of our fellow citizens.
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Those who were at the forefront of the struggle against Shah's regime, vividly remember the days of Ashoura in 1963, when even the Shah respected the sanctity of the holy day and only arrested the leaders of the opposition in the following days.
How is it that a regime born out of Ashura protests [like that of 1963] is now sending bunches of thugs to the streets and shedding people's blood on the day of Ashura? ...
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I can only cry out Imam Hossein's cry [killed in the day of Ashura in 7th century]: "Even if you don't have faith at least respect other's freedom!"
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More on the continuing unrest, possible defection by at least some of the dictatorships and Karroubi's statement can be found here.

Meanwhile, More Gruesome News from Iran

It has been a while since I last posted on events in Iran, but my heart is still with those who seek democracy and an overthrow of the Islamic dictatorship that still controls the country. Disturbing stories of the brutality of the dictatorship officials and their thugs continue to seep out of Iran and - one can hope - will perhaps in time lead to the overthrow of these foul rulers. Stories like this one from niacINsight make me sick and remind me that it is critical to keep the stories of the victims alive:

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New information is emerging about another victim of the Basij’s post-election violence. Saeedeh Pouraghaei was arrested because of her chants of Allahu-Akbar on the roof of her house in Dowlat Ave, in north of Tehran. Saeedeh was the only child of Abbas Pouraghaei who died two years ago of injuries sustained during the Iran-Iraq war. Saeedeh was arrested by the plain-clothed agents, and about 2o days after her arrest her mother was summoned to identify her body. Saeedeh’s mother says that the body was partially burned, and she recognized her daughter with difficulty. She was asked to announce “kidney failure” as the cause of death.

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According the Saeedeh’s family it seems that the body was intentionally burned to hide the evidence of rape and torture. Her body was not even handed over to her family, and they were just notified that she was secretly buried in Behesht Zahra cemetery in one of the unknown graves in section 309. Mir Hossein Mousavi attended Saeedeh’s funeral ceremony on Saturday in a mosque in Dowlat Ave.

Fixated on Iran and The Protesters

Perhaps it's the history student in me or maybe my interests in politics and foreign relations, but I find I cannot get enough information on the ongoing protest - revolution? - in Iran. Andrew Sullivan has helped lead the way in getting the story out with amazing coverage of events and often glimpses of the savagery of the government and its henchmen as people are shot or beaten to death on video. As sickening as it is, I believe it is important to witness what is happening for several reasons.

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The first reason is to be reminded of what regimes will do to remain in power - particularly those that claim to have God/Allah on their side. The ruling government in Iran has shown itself to be nothing less than utterly evil and I truly hope that all of this nightmare results in its overthrow and prosecution of those ordering the murders of protesters. Given the brutality being visited on unarmed protesters, I cannot believe any higher power/being would condone such viciousness despite what the demagogues are claiming

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The second reason is to be reminded that these Iranian protesters are the people that Bush/Cheney and their largely Christianist base wanted to bomb and annihilate. The protesters are showing that despite their different culture, they want democracy. Moreover they proving themselves much more willing to risk their lives and die for democracy than many of the falsely pious and self-satisfied haters in this country who look down upon everyone who doesn't look just like them and hold the same religious beliefs.

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Yes, watching the brutality and cruelty is heart wrenching, but in truth every American should be required to watch some of it and learn that people are people be they Christian, Jews, Hindu, or Muslim. Hatred and division based on religion are among the greatest evils in the world. And it's telling that those who claim to be the most religious and pios are the ones most filled with hate and judgment of others.

More Thoughts on Iran

It is truly difficult to know what is really happening in Iran, but it truly appears that the Islamic dictatorship has unleashed much more than it bargained for in the apparent shameless rigging of the vote the week before last. Where it all will lead no one knows either here in the USA or in Iran. My thoughts and prayers go out to those demonstrating and demanding true democracy as opposed to what Iran has suffered under since 1979. Some of the best coverage is via Andrew Sullivan's blog which is demonstrating daily how the old media formula cannot deliver constantly updated information and analysis. As Andrew notes via a New Yorker article that quotes his blog, the big question is when and if the military begins to shift it's support to those in the streets:

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The footage from Tehran today looks like urban warfare. Gone are the massive crowds. Instead we see bands of civilians under attack from bands of thugs, gunshots, flames, thin crowds chased through side streets. If the authorities succeed in keeping demonstrators dispersed and on the run, they could swiftly seize the upper hand. The Web site Tehran Bureau is reporting forty dead and more than two hundred wounded. The victims are seeking aid in foreign embassies rather than hospitals, according to Twitter reports from Tehran.

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There are reports that those demonstrators who came out today planned, via the Internet, to bring Korans onto the streets, and to sit and read from them when attacked by militiamen. Such tactics are in keeping with these demonstrators’ use of slogans and imagery taken from religion and from the Islamic Revolution of 1979—shouting “Allahu Akbar” from the rooftops, organizing demonstrations as public memorials for the dead, refusing (for the most part, at least until today) to attack Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei by name or to call for an end to theocratic rule. In effect, they are saying, We are not against the revolution or against the Islamic Republic. We are its defenders from desecration. Having the former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi for a leader helps in this regard, because of his close historic association with the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

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I think there is still a battle being waged for the hearts and minds of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij. Successful nonviolent movements in other countries have depended on the cooptation of the rank and file in the armed forces; . . . It is one thing to unleash brutal force on crowds that insult the Leader or Islam. That was how the members of the Revolutionary Guards and Basij could defend their assault on demonstrators at Tehran University in 1999. But now, in the name of Ahmadinejad’s controversial presidency, they are being asked to violently disperse fellow Iranians who are chanting religious slogans, carrying Korans, and calling for the lawful counting of their votes. Whether or not the rumors of splits at the top of the Revolutionary Guards’ hierarchy are true, the rank and file is not necessarily monolithic.

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If the opposition does indeed hope to appeal to the common humanity of its attackers, however, today’s events have not been particularly encouraging. Reports on Andrew Sullivan’s indispensable blog show unremitting violence, and a turn toward more frankly oppositional slogans on the part of the demonstrators.

Neither Free nor Fair

As turmoil in Iran continues the Washington Post's editorial correctly notes that even if Mahmoud "We Have No Homosexuals in Iran" Ahmadinejad won the election as he claims - something I tend to personally doubt - the manner in which protesters are being attacked, wounded and likely killed makes it clear that the Islamic fundamentalist government is a fraud and holds on to power by force and the use of terror. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered an investigation into allegations that the country's presidential vote was marred by ballot fraud, but I suspect that the result of that investigation is already a foregone conclusion unless done under the eyes of international observers. Here are some highlights from the editorial:

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What we can say for certain is that the election was neither free nor fair. When a regime peremptorily chooses which candidates can run; shutters newspapers, Web sites and television bureaus; silences text messaging; and throws critics into prison -- such a regime should not expect its pronouncements on election results to garner any respect.

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[T]here are principles that the [Obama] administration could be defending even now, squarely supporting the rule of law and democratic expression in Iran. The United States could make clear that a government wanting to be taken seriously by the international community should not use violence against peaceful protests, arrest opposition leaders and their followers, jam radio broadcasts, or block Internet use. It could call for a transparent process to address opposition claims of fraud.

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But it is now undeniable that many, many Iranians reject the Ahmadinejad regime and much of what it stands for, at home and abroad. The presidential campaigns revealed tremendous popular ferment in Iran and large swaths of discontent with current economic, foreign and social policies, including the repression of women. U.S.-Iranian relations are unlikely to flourish as long as so many voices there remain suppressed. As Mr. Obama began doing in his Cairo speech, the United States has to find a way to speak to Iran's people as well as the leaders who claim to represent them.

Looking at George Bush's America

As my last political comment post of 2007, I want to call attention to this New York Times editorial (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) because it does a great job in call attention to what this nation has become under the Chimperator's regime. It is not a pretty picture and one that I wish more U.s. citizens would focus upon. This president has usurped for himself powers akin to some dictator in a banana republic when it comes to the rights of individual citizens. Without a sea change after the 2008 elections, American democracy as it once was will be a thing of the past. Bush has made it nearly impossible for a thinking person with a conscience to be proud to be a citizen of this nation. Here are some highlights:

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.

It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001. . . . there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.

In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.

The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could.

There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them. We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.

Constitution suspended; Supreme Court judges taken away before vote on president's fate

When I first saw this headline, my immediate thought was: OMG, Bush and Cheney have staged a coup and are seeking set up a dictatorship!!!!

Then I saw that it was a story about Pakistan. Obviously, if Pakistan is on the verge of having all Hell break loose, the mess in the Middle East created by the Chimperator will get even worse. Funny how I thought Chimpy said our goal was to develop democracy. This does not sound like that to me. Here are Fox News highlights:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gen. Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan on Saturday ahead of a crucial Supreme Court ruling on his future as president, suspending the constitution, replacing the chief justice and cutting communications in the capital. Pakistan's main opposition leader, Benezir Bhutto, flew back to the country from Dubai after visiting family and was sitting in an airplane at Karachi's airport, waiting to see if she would be arrested or deported, a spokesman said. Reports said around 100 paramilitary troops surrounded her house.

Seven Supreme Court judges immediately came out against the emergency, which suspended the current constitution. Police blocked entry to the Supreme Court building and later took the chief justice and other judges away in a convoy, witnesses said. "The chief of army staff has proclaimed a state of emergency and issued a provisional constitutional order," a newscaster on state Pakistan TV said, adding that Musharraf would address the nation later Saturday. The government halted all television transmissions in major cities other than state-controlled Pakistan TV. Telephone service in the capital, Islamabad, was cut.

A copy of the emergency order obtained by The Associated Press justified the declaration on the grounds that "some members of the judiciary are working at cross purposes with the executive" and "weakening the government's resolve" to fight terrorism. The U.S. and other Western allies urged Musharraf this week not to declare martial law or an emergency that would jeopardize the country's transition to democracy. Crucial parliamentary elections meant to restore civilian rule are due by January.

The emergency was expected to be followed by arrests of lawyers and other perceived opponents of the government, including civil society activists and possibly even members of the judiciary itself, a ruling party lawmaker said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Private Geo TV reported that the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Aitzaz Ahsan, had been arrested. He was a lawyer for Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, whom Musharraf tried and failed to oust this spring, sparking a popular movement against military rule. Geo also reported that the chief justice had been told that "his services were no longer required."

Bush Undermines Voting Rights and the U. S. Constitution

More and more information is coming to light about the manner in which Chimperator Bush and his regime - I call it a regime, because Bush and Cheney view themselves as co-dictators - want to subvert democarcy. Here's portions of a story from The Nation about voter suppression that sounds like something from a banana republic or the days of the Jim Crow laws.

Thanks to rigorous work by the Brennan Center for Justice and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, it is clear that the US. Attorney scandal – as outrageous as it is on its own – is part of a much broader effort by the Bush Administration to use government institutions for partisan gain.

In their report – Using Justice to Suppress the Vote – the two pro-democracy, pro-civil rights organizations demonstrate that the [Bush] Administration used federal agencies charged with protecting voters' rights to promote voter suppression, influence voting rules, and gain advantage in battleground states. This was achieved through a four-pronged strategy: dismantling the infrastructure at the Department of Justice; fomenting a fear of rampant voter fraud (which has subsequently been disproved – it actually occurs "statistically…about as often as death by lightning strike"); politically motivated prosecutions; and restricting registration and voting.

Experienced civil rights attorneys were removed, transferred, or denied cases in favor of new hires who lacked experience but had the right conservative credentials.

The full story appears here: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=207819