Sunday Roundup - August 18, 2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media.  Today the deteriorating situation in Egypt is discussed.  Source: Al Jazeera

The short-lived Egyptian democracy descended into chaos this past week. The violent crackdown on pro-Morsi protesters drew widespread condemnation from world leaders. An estimated 600 people were killed Wednesday when security forces broke up protest camps allied to the Muslim Brotherhood. New protests were held Thursday and Friday with dozens of fatalities.

Al Jazeera's coverage Friday included
reports on the day's clashes: 

At least a dozen people have been killed in fresh clashes in Egypt as anti-coup protesters returned to the streets to demand the end of the military-led regime...as crowds filled streets across Egypt to heed the Muslim Brotherhood's call for a "Day of Rage", following the deaths of hundreds of protesters on August 14 as police cleared sit-ins opposing the military coup and removal of president Mohamed Morsi.

the UN Security Council's call for maximum restraint :
The UN Security Council has called on the Egyptian government and the Muslim Brotherhood to exercise "maximum restraint", after an emergency meeting on Thursday: "The view of council members is that it is important to end violence in Egypt, and that the parties exercise maximum restraint," Argentine UN Ambassador Maria Cristina Perceval told reporters after the 15-member council met on the situation. "The members first of all expressed their sympathy to the victims and regretted the loss of lives," said Perceval, who is council president for August. "There was a common desire on the need to stop violence and to advance national reconciliation."

attacks against Egyptian Christians, who are seen as supportive of the transition: 

Amid the violence, alleged Morsi supporters carried out on dozens of attacks on churches and Christian-owned properties throughout the country. Mina Thabet, an activist with Christian rights group the Maspero Youth Union, told Al Jazeera on Friday that at least 32 churches had been “completely destroyed, burned or looted” in eight different governorates over the previous two days. The group also recorded dozens of other attacks on Christian-owned shops, businesses and schools around the country.

 

In the light of the week's violence, Al Jazeera's Inside Story video segment asks "what are the risks of ignoring the different groups within the country and how will the government deal with worldwide anger?" Besides the global condemnation of the government's action, interim Vice-President Mohamed El Baradei resigned in protest against the government's actions saying that he "could not be responsible for one drop of blood that could be avoided".

 

On Saturday, Al Jazeera reported that "Egyptian authorities have cleared a Cairo mosque of anti-coup protesters, following a day-long siege punctuated by gunfire, tear gas volleys and mob attacks." Apparently there were no deaths reported - unlike Friday when "at least 173 people were killed and 1,330 others were injured nationwide." Al Jazeera also reported that "Egyptian Prime Minister Hazemel-Beblawi...proposed the legal dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood and the government is studying the idea."

 

On Sunday, Al Jazeera had these two feature articles on Egypt's future.

Will Egypt repeat Algeria's 'black decade'? Comparisons between Egypt's present crisis and the upheaval in 1990s Algeria gain credibility.

Egypt's fate in balance amid warnings of war: Armed conflict has been predicted by foreign commentators - but the greater threat is Egypt becoming a failed state.

 

 

 

 

Ten Good Things

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   Quote of the Day

"To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle."

- Walt Whitman

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Before the do-nothing, filibuster-mongering 113th Congress returns from its recess and before the democracy-challenged Supreme Court gets back in session, I thought it would be timely to present another list of Ten Good Things that happened in the past few months.

1. This has been the "Summer of Saturn." Starting in May and continuing through the end of this month, the ringed planet has been clearly visible in the night sky. Even with a small telescope you can see the rings (which are just 328 feet thick!) and maybe a few of the planet's moons. Because of the relative positions of Earth and Saturn in their orbits, the rings are currently at an angle. What a phenomenal reminder of the beauty of the universe!
 

[Photo is from skyscrapers.org website]

Link to Viewing Saturn webpage on NASA website

2. Was there a more memorable moment in the Major League Baseball's 2013 All-Star Game (or any All-Star game for that matter) than when Yankee pitcher Mariano Rivera took the field in the bottom of the eighth inning? As the greatest closer of all time jogged in from the bullpen in what will be his last All-Star Game, his American League teammates honored him by staying off the field. There he was - alone on the pitcher's mound with everyone in New York's Citi Field on their feet and cheering, American and National League players on the dugout steps cheering and snapping pictures with their cell phones.  Jim Leyland, the manager of the American League All-Stars, showed real class by bringing him in for the bottom of the eighth, thereby ensuring that Mariano would receive the adulation of the crowd - had the National League bats erupted in the eighth, there would be no bottom of the ninth and no appearance by Mariano Rivera. And as happened so many times in the past, three batters came up to face him and three batters went down.

Links to videos:
YouTube "Mariano Rivera Entrance 2013 All-Star Game"
MLB website "Rivera's tribute latest, and greatest, of its kind"

 

3. The Hero of Cleveland - Charles Ramsey rescued three women who had been held captive for a decade. "He was eating a Big Mac at his home in Cleveland, Ohio when Charles Ramsey heard yelling from across the street, grabbed his hamburger and knocked his neighbor's front door down rescuing [the] three Ohio women." McDonald's and 14 local Cleveland restaurants have offered him free hamburgers for life. [examiner.com website]
[Photo of Charles Ramsey is from AP]

4. Democratic Governor Steve Beshear of "red state" Kentucky (also the home of Mr. Filibuster Mitch McConnell), is enthusiastically implementing the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). "Calling it 'the single-most important decision in our lifetime for improving the health of Kentuckians,' Gov. Steve Beshear today announced the inclusion of 308,000 more Kentuckians in the federal Medicaid health insurance program. The expansion, together with the creation of the Health Benefit Exchange, will ensure that every Kentuckian will have access to affordable health insurance." [News release posted on WFPL(Louisville) website]

5. Half a Loaf is Better, etc. - Republican Governor Chris Christie of "blue state" New Jersey signed off on ten new gun-control laws. Okay, most of these were non-controversial (who's going to argue with keeping potential terrorists from "obtaining firearms identification cards or permits to purchase handguns"?). Five more "controversial" bills are still on his desk - including one calling for "background checks for all private gun sales and require all prospective gun owners to attend a gun safety training class" and another that "would ban a model of .50 caliber rifle, the most powerful rifle available to civilians." Still, it's a step in the right direction by a Republican governor who is looking over his shoulder at the NRA and at a potential run for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2016. [Washington Free Beacon website]

See below for a Mayor Against Illegal Guns graphic showing individual states' progress towards gun-control.

 

6. Narita's "Song of the Seashore" was written in 1916 but I only came across it recently. Gentle, wistful and haunting, the song tells of memories engendered by a walk along the seashore. Links to a couple of excellent versions on YouTube:

Arranged for Flute Quartet - the version I first found

Arranged for Singer and Piano - a particularly beautiful vocal rendition

7. John Kerry has gotten the Israelis and Palestinians to sit down and begin talking peace. After three years of not even talking to each other, at least the two sides are sitting down at the same table. Whether anything finally comes of Kerry's initiative, only time will tell.

8. US National Soccer Team reaches the top 20. "Team USA's flawless execution at the CONCACAF Gold Cup paid dividends in two ways. First, they won the Gold Cup by defeating Panama 1-0 in the final at Soldier Field; second they moved back into the world's top twenty teams in the latest ranking released by FIFA on Thursday." [examiner.com website] This is the first time since 2010 that the national team has been ranked this high. 

9. The US Senate passed a bipartisan bill on immigration reform that includes a path to citizenry for undocumented immigrants.

10. When Daft Punk, the French electronic music duo, had to cancel from Stephen Colbert's Comedy Central show because of contractual obligations to MTV, Colbert showed us how to make lemonade out of lemons in this absolutely hilarious segment from the show. There are dozens of videos out there - here's the one from the Colbert Nation website.

Colbert Nation video of Colbert's Daft Punk dance


Other Stuff

Mayors Against Illegal Guns Graphic

 

Sunday Round-Up - August 11, 2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at post-Constitutional America, the recently eviscerated Voting Rights Act, the "liberal media" and the surprising allies in the unfolding drama in Egypt.  Sources include TomDispatch.com, The Daily Kos, Mother Jones, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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Quote of the Day

Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far,

justice is always in jeopardy. 

- Walt Whitman

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Post-Constitutional America

In a TomDispatch post on August 4, former State Department whistle blower Peter van Buren paints a chilling picture of the America that we are now living in. Two hundred thirty five years to the day after the Continental Congress established the first whistle blower protection law (see below), Wiki-leaker Bradley Manning was convicted on 20 of 22 counts and now faces up to 136 years in prison. The government's actions have "ushered us, almost unnoticed, into post-Constitutional America." Van Buren notes that in recent years, "weapons, tactics, and techniques developed in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in the war on terror have begun arriving in the homeland." His examples include up-armored police departments, drones, and "above all, suveillance technolgy." Also present in our post-Constitutional nation is a "new Guantanamo-ized definition of justice." And so to the arrest and detainment of Bradley Manning.   After his arrest, Manning was subjected to "three years of cruel detainment, where, as might well have happened at Gitmo, Manning, kept in isolation, was deprived of clothing, communications, legal advice, and sleep. The sleep deprivation regime imposed on him certainly met any standard, other than Washington’s and possibly Pyongyang’s, for torture." As for the trial itself, "rules of evidence reaching back to early English common law were turned upside down." So what are some aspects of post-Constitutional America as it is beginning to take shape? Just a few examples from Van Buren's post:

• "Post-9/11, torture famously stopped being torture if an American did it, and its users were not prosecutable by the Justice Department."
• "Full-spectrum spying is not considered to violate the Fourth Amendment and does not even require probable cause."
• "Government whistleblowers are commanded to return to face justice, while law-breakers in the service of the government are allowed to flee justice."
• "Secret laws and secret courts can create secret law you can’t know about for “crimes” you don’t even know exist. You can nonetheless be arrested for committing them."

 

The "Liberal Media"

The Daily Kos had a great post on August 7: "15 Things Everyone Would Know If There Were a Liberal Media".  From the impact of outsourcing on the US job market to the outrageous Republican gerrymandering of Congressional districts to US market-driven health care costs (highest per capita in the world) to the number of prisoners in US jails (we have 25% of the world's prisoners and rank #1 in this department), the post is well worth a read. Here's one of the neat graphics from the post.

 

1965 Voting Rights Act

On the 48th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act being signed into law by LBJ, Mother Jones had a post reminding us of how much the law has meant.   MJ presented "five recent and egregious examples of minority discrimination that were blocked by Section 5, the part of the law the Supreme Court eviscerated in June." Here are two of them:

• The all-white board of aldermen in the town of Kilmichael, Mississippi (pop. 830), canceled town elections after an unprecedented number of black candidates made it onto the ballot. The DOJ forced an election and the town elected its first black mayor and three black aldermen.
• After the 2010 census showed that blacks had become a majority in Georgia's Augusta-Richmond, the state Legislature passed a bill that "rescheduled voting from November, which had a traditionally high black voter turnout, to July, which had a low turnout overall, but especially for blacks. The change only affected Augusta-Richmond, and, not surprisingly, was rejected under Section 5."

 

The Egyptian Restoration

Sarah Chayes, in an August 1 article for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "The Egyptian Restoration", tries to address recent developments in Egypt. "Much of the Egyptian population now embraces the very military it seemed bent on ejecting from power during the 2011 revolution. What's the reason for the about-face?", she asks. Chayes offers a reappraisal of the Egyptian Arab Spring based on interviews she conducted in 2011 and in July 2013:

1. The 2011 protesters were not revolting against the military. "The protests were enraged not at Mubarak’s army but at a tight network of high-rolling capitalists who were seen to have hijacked the Egyptian government (military included), rewriting the laws, awarding themselves privileged access to land and other public resources, and employing police repression, all for personal gain."

2. Democracy, per se, was not the aim of the 2011 revolution. "Protesters...were not demanding the vote for the sake of the vote. They were demanding the deliverables that are supposed to result from democracy...[They were demanding] that the perpetrators of the heist of public resources be subject to repercussions...the return of stolen or squandered public assets; an end to the pervasive corruption, which cascaded down from the top of the system to include daily shakedowns by auxiliary police, institutionalized graft in public tenders at all levels of government, and ad hoc fees demanded even by teachers and doctors."

3. The Morsi government was seen to be merely substituting Muslim Brotherhood networks for those of Mubarak. Many Egyptians became convinced "that the Muslim Brotherhood had no intention of enacting the type of systemic corrections the revolutionaries had demanded."

4. The Egyptian military is neither as powerful nor as competent as it is cracked up to be.

5. Some in both the Brotherhood and the military have an interest in continuing the violence. "The goal (achieved masterfully by the Algerian government in the 1990s) would be to present the people—and the international community—with a stark choice between authoritarianism and terrorism."

6. "Egyptians, for now, seem to have convinced themselves that this is indeed the choice they are facing. And they have chosen the former. They have opted for Restoration."

Other Stuff

Comics

Link to Comic Strip "The NSA Comes Clean" by Tom Tomorrow from Comics/DailyKos.  Hilarious.

Continental Congress' "Whistle Blower" Protection Law (July 30, 1778)

"...it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States to give the earliest information to Congress or other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds, or misdemeanors committed by any officers or persons in the service of these states.”

Who Is "Mother Jones"?

Mother Jones is a courageous source of investigative journalism. But who, if anyone, is the publication's namesake? Well, according to Wikipedia: "Mary Harris "Mother" Jones (July 1837– 30 November 1930) was an Irish-American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent labor and community organizer. She then helped coordinate major strikes and cofounded the Industrial Workers of the World."



The $60 Trillion Climate Time Bomb

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Quote of the day

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.

- Walt Whitman

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Bubbles of methane emerge from sediments below a frozen Alaskan lake.

In an August 2011 post, I mentioned the severe impact on the global warming process from the release of methane trapped in ice and ocean sediment in arctic regions. A temperature increase of a few degrees in the Earth's annual temperature would cause this methane to begin to volatilize and get into the atmosphere. Methane is a strong greenhouse gas and this increased concentration in the atmosphere would further raise temperatures, leading to a runaway effect. There are 400 billion tons of methane locked in the frozen arctic tundra - more than enough to fuel this chain reaction.

In July, the journal Nature published a study of the economic impact of the release of methane from a 50 billion ton reservoir of methane on the East Siberian shelf. The authors, researchers from Cambridge and from Erasmus University, in Rotterdam believe that the "economic impacts of a warming Arctic are being ignored" and they set out to remedy that. Using a sophisticated climate change model called PAGE09, they quantified how methane released from this one reservoir would affect the global economy. Their sobering conclusion: the release of methane would "bring forward by 15–35 years the average date at which the global mean temperature rise exceeds 2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels." This methane release would add significantly to the already staggering costs of climate change. It is an economic time bomb. 

The 2 degree figure is the estimated maximum global temperature rise above which the Earth would experience devastating climate effects such as crop failure and melting glaciers.   Now for the really bad news..."[T]he International Energy Agency warned [in June] that the world is on course for a rise of 3.6 to 5.3 degrees Celsius citing record high global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions last year." [Reuters/Huffington Post]

The authors of the Nature article "calculate that the costs of a melting Arctic will be huge, because the region is pivotal to the functioning of Earth systems such as oceans and the climate. The release of methane from thawing permafrost beneath the East Siberian Sea, off northern Russia, alone comes with an average global price tag of $60 trillion in the absence of mitigating action — a figure comparable to the size of the world economy in 2012 (about $70 trillion). The total cost of Arctic change will be much higher."

The researchers also looked at a "low emissions" case where mitigation steps were taken to keep the global mean temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius. The results of the low emissions case are somewhat better but would still cause a global economic impact of $37 trillion.

"Much of the cost will be borne by developing countries, which will face extreme weather, poorer health and lower agricultural production as Arctic warming affects climate. All nations will be affected, not just those in the far north, and all should be concerned about changes occurring in this region...Mid-latitude economies such as those in Europe and the United States could be threatened, for example, by a suggested link between sea-ice retreat and the strength and position of the jet stream8, bringing extreme winter and spring weather. Unusual positioning of the jet stream over the Atlantic is thought to have caused this year's protracted cold spell in Europe."

The authors conclude that it may be too late to prevent this methane release and recommend that responsible bodies such as the World Economic Forum "should...encourage innovative adaptation and mitigation plans. It will be difficult — perhaps impossible — to avoid large methane releases in the East Siberian Sea without major reductions in global emissions of CO2."

Other Stuff

The methane trapped in the sea in the form of methane hydrates represents a huge potential energy source. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there are somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 trillion cubic feet out there. "To put that in perspective, that is an amount equal to, or greater than the total amount of all other fossil fuels on the planet. Estimates vary, but even the conservative ones say there is more than twice as much methane hydrate as there is natural gas." [Triple Pundit Website]

The Atlantic's May 2013 cover story was "We Will Never Run Out of Oil". Author Charles C. Mann describes the efforts of the Japanese to commercialize the extraction process. With little in the way of coal and oil reserves, the Japanese are in the forefront of this effort that "could free not just Japan but much of the world from the dependence on Middle Eastern oil that has bedeviled politiican's since Churchill's day."

Clive Cussler's adventure novel Fire Ice, published in 2002, has the ocean's methane hydrate formations off the eastern US coast as its focal point. Cussler and co-author Paul Kemprecos spin a thrilling tale of a megalomaniacal plot to set off methane hydrates in the seabed, triggering devastating earthquakes and tidal waves.

[Photo Credit: Josh Haner/The New York Times/Redux/Eyevine - from July 24 Nature article]

Sabotaging Obamacare

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over

and expecting different results."

- Benjamin Franklin

For the thirty-ninth (or was it the fortieth?) time since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) became the law of the land, House Republicans voted to repeal it. Since the repeal vote would not pass in the Senate and would never be signed by the President, their vote is a symbolic and, some would say, stupid gesture. At a time when official unemployment is hovering at the 7.5% level, you would think a jobs bill would be a more effective use of their time. With the House's shenanigans and with Senate Republicans now calling for a government shutdown to effect a defunding of the ACA, the right wing nut jobs who control the Republican Party but more especially, the Republican Congressional leaders, have drawn the wrath of a leading conservative thinker. American Enterprise Institute's Norm Ornstein has called them out.

Writing in the National Journal, Ornstein calls the House and Senate Republicans' "monomaniacal focus on sabotaging the implementation of Obamacare" unprecedented and contemptible. He contrasts the Republican response to Obamacare with the way Democrats helped to smooth the implementation of George Bush's extension of prescription drug coverage to Medicare recipients. Ornstein writes:

For three years, Republicans in the Senate refused to confirm anybody to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services...to damage the possibility of a smooth rollout of the health reform plan. Guerrilla efforts to cut off funding, dozens of votes to repeal, abusive comments by leaders, attempts to discourage states from participating in Medicaid expansion or crafting exchanges, threatening letters to associations that might publicize the availability of insurance on exchanges, and now a new set of threats—to have a government shutdown, or to refuse to raise the debt ceiling, unless the president agrees to stop all funding for implementation of the plan...What is going on now to sabotage Obamacare is...sharply beneath any reasonable standards of elected officials with the fiduciary responsibility of governing.

[T]o do everything possible to undercut and destroy its implementation—which in this case means finding ways to deny coverage to many who lack any health insurance; to keep millions who might be able to get better and cheaper coverage in the dark about their new options; to create disruption for the health providers who are trying to implement the law, including insurers, hospitals, and physicians; to threaten the even greater disruption via a government shutdown or breach of the debt limit in order to blackmail the president into abandoning the law; and to hope to benefit politically from all the resulting turmoil—is simply unacceptable, even contemptible. One might expect this kind of behavior from a few grenade-throwing firebrands. That the effort is spearheaded by the Republican leaders of the House and Senate—even if Speaker John Boehner is motivated by fear of his caucus, and McConnell and Cornyn by fear of Kentucky and Texas Republican activists—takes one's breath away.

Apropos of Nothing

The US postal zip code celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Expanded to 9 digits in 1983, the Zoning Improvement Plan was rolled out in 1963 to help in the sorting of mail, which was becoming unmanageable due to the growth in business mail.  Mr. Zip was the agent of change.

 

[Photo is from a Mental Floss webpage on zip code facts]

Democracy - The What's Left of It Edition (Part 2)

This is the second post on the state of our democracy.  In the July 31 post, I listed my personal choices of the #10 through #6 threats to American democracy.   To wit: (10) Wealth disparity, (9) Misinformed citizenry, (8) Government spying, (7) Special interest money, (6) Political attack ads.  Concluding the countdown, here are the top five attacks on democracy in this country.

#5 - The Filibuster

The 60 vote requirement to break a Senate filibuster is the equivalent of 9 stolen elections.  Instead of the majority needing 51 votes to pass legislation, they need 60.  The filibuster's original purpose - preventing the hasty but perhaps unwise action of the majority - has been distorted and abused in an unprecedented fashion in the past several years after the election of Barack Obama. When first conceived, the filibuster required Senators to actually speak about the legislation under consideration. The primary purpose of the now non-talking filibuster as wielded by Senate Republicans today has been to block Presidential nominations (both judicial and executive) and to block legislation supported by the majority of the American people (e.g., universal background checks for gun purchases). Since Republicans lost the Senate in 2006, there have been 425 cloture motions. Cloture motions only represent the attempts to break the filibuster. Sometimes the majority will not even get that far. The Senate can change its own rules. Eliminating the filibuster altogether would be the right (democratic) thing to do. Failing that, there should be limits placed on debate. Senators need to talk to the issue and after a given number of hours of debate be required to give an up or down vote.

#4 - Congressional district gerrymandering

 

One man/woman, one vote, right? Well, thanks to the magic of gerrymandering of Congressional districts by state legislatures, that isn't always the case. Boundaries are often redrawn to give an advantage to the party in power in the state. Republicans have been excellent at it, taking full advantage of the most recent census and their victories in the 2010 elections. As noted on the PolicyMic website: "The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) has an agenda. It has been costly but its goal is simple: Get more congressional seats without actually winning them. This wildly undemocratic goal has been successfully pursued in seven states: Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, Florida, and Ohio." In the current version of the 113th do-nothing Congress, Republicans hold a 34 vote majority. Yet nationwide, Republican House candidates received fewer votes than the Democrats in the 2012 elections. So how did they end up with ~54% of the House seats when they had less than 50% of the vote? I've created this chart from the PolicyMic post that goes some way towards explaining it.

State	Dem Popular vote	Rep Popular vote	House seats Dems	House seats Reps
North Carolina	51 pct	49 pct	4	9
Michigan	52 pct	47 pct	5	9
Wisconsin	51 pct	49 pct	3	5
Pennsylvania	50.65%	49.34%	5	13
Florida	48 pct	52 pct	10	17
Ohio	47 pct	53 pct	4	12
Virginia	49 pct	51 pct	3	8

For these seven gerrymandered states, Republicans were awarded 73 House seats; Democrats, 34 - a 39 vote margin when the popular vote was nearly evenly split.

The next step in the Republican plan is to try to pass "electoral college" legislation in states they control but which have typically voted for Democrats in national elections. This scheme would award electoral votes according to who wins the Congressional district rather than the popular vote across the state. Had this been the case in 2012 with the gerrymandered districts, we would be talking about President Romney's policies today even though Obama received more than 50% of the popular vote nationwide.

#3 - SCOTUS' Citizens United ruling on corporate "free speech"

SCOTUS' infamous Citizens United decision gave corporations the status of persons - at least as far as freedom of speech goes. The decision eliminated the ban on political spending by corporations and unions. As summarized on the Center for Public Integrity's webpage on the subject: "The Citizens United ruling, released in January 2010, tossed out the corporate and union ban on making independent expenditures and financing electioneering communications. It gave corporations and unions the green light to spend unlimited sums on ads and other political tools, calling for the election or defeat of individual candidates." A companion ruling several weeks later in Federal court (SpeechNow.org) decided that limits on individual contributions to groups that make independent expenditures are unconstitutional. It further allows non-profits and so-called "social welfare organizations" ( aka 501(c)(4)), such as business leagues, to keep their donor lists secret. And what was the result? "The 2012 election was the most expensive and least transparent presidential campaign of the modern era." The flood of super-PAC and "social welfare group" money was astounding. And it was mainly spent in opposition to candidates. 266 Super-PAC's spent $546.5 million dollars during the 2012 Presidential election cycle. More than half of the Super-PAC money ($290 million) was spent trying to defeat just one candidate - Barack Obama. Then there is the "dark money" from social welfare organizations and non-profits. Dark money is so-named because unlike PAC's, these organizations do not have to reveal their donors. Overall, dark money spent on the 2012 elections totaled $300 million. The financing of election campaigns is totally out-of-control thanks to these Supreme Court and lower court rulings. Several states have begun working on a Constitutional Amendment that would overturn Citizens United. This appears to be the only way out of the morass - both on a national and state level. It's obvious that there will be no relief from the current Supreme Court, who saw fit in their wisdom to overturn a 100 year-old Montana law limiting individual campaign contributions in February 2012.

#2 - SCOTUS destroys the Voting Rights Act

This has been previously blogged (June25, 2013 SCOTUS: R.I.P. Voting Rights Act) so I'll just sum up a few salient points here. Justice Ginsburg's dissent said it well: "The sad irony of today’s decision lies in its utter failure to grasp why the VRA has proven effective," Ginsburg wrote. "The Court appears to believe that the VRA’s success in eliminating the specific devices extant in 1965 means that preclear­ance is no longer needed." The provision has proven "enormously successful" in increasing minority registration and access to the ballot and preventing a "return to old ways," Ginsburg said. Even in jurisdictions where discrimination may not be overt, "subtle methods" have emerged to diminish minority turnout, such as racial gerrymandering. With the House in Republican hands and Mitch "Mr. Filibuster" McConnell leading the Senate Republicans, Sections 4 and 5 will not be rewritten by Congress in the foreseeable future. The decision has unleashed what MoJo blogger Kevin Drum describesas a "GOP feeding frenzy". The North Carolina legislature recently passed the worst voter suppression law in the country. For a complete listing of the provisions of this incredible attack on the right to vote see Ari Berman's post on the Moyers & Company website.  Berman's post points out that "Six Southern states have passed or implemented new voting restrictions since the Supreme Court’s decision last month invalidating Section 4 of the VRA, which will go down in history as one of the worst rulings in the past century."  The right to vote is the most fundamental and distinguishing feature of a democracy. A constitutional Amendment guaranteeing all citizens the right to vote is needed if we are to ensure democracy's survival.

And the #1 threat to American democracy is....state voter suppression laws.

For the most part, Republican voter suppression laws did not succeed in the 2012 elections - certainly not in their main objective: to defeat Barack Obama.  Aimed at denying the vote to traditionally Democratic voters, these laws were a combination of overly restrictive voter ID laws, reductions in early voting days, limitations on voter registration drives, and elimination of or severe restrictions on provisional balloting - what happens when you show up at the wrong polling place. These throw backs to the now unconstitutional poll taxes of yesteryear were overcome by a combination of judicial action in state and Federal courts and executive action (enforcing Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act) and a massive turnout effort on the part of Democrats. And a good thing they were. Based on the Brennan Center for Justice's October 2011 analysis, the laws in place by year end 2011 would have made it "significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012." States implementing these restrictive voter ID and registration laws "will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 – 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency." This figure of 171 electoral votes was revised upwards to 189 in a March 2012 update.  Democracy escaped Republican clutches this time but in 2014 and 2016, we may not be so fortunate. North Carolina recently enacted the most restrictive voting law in the country in the aftermath of SCOTUS' gutting of the Voting Rights Act.   (If you haven't gone to the Moyers & Company website, here's another chance - North Carolina really has passed a most incredible law.)  Five other Southern states have done likewise.  And if someone without Obama's drawing power and organizational savvy becomes the Democratic candidate, the laws will certainly have their desired effect. The best short-term hope to blunt this blatant attack on voting rights will be the Administration's challenging of the voter ID laws. They'll need to spend a lot more effort on this now that SCOTUS has effectively destroyed the Voting Rights Act .
 

Many of the problems affecting our democracy are rooted in our election laws and the way we finance public elections. Under the current system, money wins elections. Period. Public financing of all Federal elections has no chance of being enacted for now.  Nor is there any chance of bi-partisan reform of existing laws passing the obstructed 113th Congress. So, in the meantime, we need to take our gains, limited as they are by the Citizens United decision, and defend our rights, as difficult as it may be, wherever we can. In the end, it may be down to a constitutional amendment to protect the right to vote - this most basic right of a citizen of a democracy.

Sunday Round-Up - August 4, 2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media.  This week we cover ongoing developments in the NSA spying story, the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and the coming drought in the American West.  Sources include The Guardian, The Moscow Times, Pravda, Al Jazeera, Haaretz and TomDispatch.com.

NSA Spying
On Wednesday in The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald reported on the latest revelations from the documents released by whistle blower Edward Snowden - the NSA tool X-Keyscore.  The program "allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals."  US officials issued disclaimers but, Greenwald continues, "training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed....Beyond emails, the XKeyscore system allows analysts to monitor a virtually unlimited array of other internet activities, including those within social media."  See The Guardian article for a more detailed look at this invasive tool. 

Congress may try one more time to rein in the NSA.  As reported in an article in Friday's Guardian: "Members of Congress are considering 11 legislative measures to constrain the activities of the National Security Agency, in a major shift of political opinion in the eight weeks since the first revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden.  The proposals range from repealing the legal foundations of key US surveillance powers to more moderate reforms of the secretive court proceedings for domestic spying. If enacted, the laws would represent the first rollback of the NSA's powers since 9/11....Justin Amash, the Republican congressman whose measure to terminate the indiscriminate collection of phone data was narrowly defeated 10 days ago, said he was certain the next legislative push will succeed." 

Meanwhile Edward Snowden has received one year temporary asylum in Russia.  The Moscow Times reported some details on Friday: "The temporary refugee status granted to Snowden will expire July 31, 2014. It can then be subsequently extended for another year upon request or upgraded to 5-year permanent asylum. Snowden can eventually be granted Russian citizenship."   The Guardian reported on the US reaction on Thursday: "The White House expressed anger and dismay on Thursday after Russia granted temporary asylum to the American whistleblower Edward Snowden and allowed him to leave the Moscow airport where he had been holed up for over a month."  White House spokesman Jay Carney noted that the granting of asylum may put in jeopardy the bilateral summit between Obama and Putin planned during the G20 meeting in Russia in September.  Perhaps anticipating the granting of asylum,  Pravda describes the internal Russian debate in a July 26 op-ed by Yuri Ursov, the former head of the press service of the Russian Security Council: "What can you say to those who believe that the actions of Snowden are betrayal? Betrayal is when a person takes actions that cause harm to their country, violates the oath, the duty, when their actions lead to significant financial losses. What did Snowden do? Snowden said that the U.S. government, the CIA, violated their own laws, in particular, the 4^th and 5^th amendment to the Constitution of the United States by organizing surveillance of members of the online community, organizing wiretapping, and recording telephone conversations. Can we call information of the impending or committed crime a betrayal?"  Ursov opines that Snowden actions were completely legitimate: "Snowden acted out of two legitimate reasons. First, observing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1947, which prohibits interference with private life, and second, following the U.S. legislation that threatens prosecution to citizens who do not report a deliberation of a crime or a committed crime. Snowden reported the crime, and called the authorities and intelligence services criminals. The accused, of course, immediately blamed him for a violation of the oath and espionage."

Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks
The past week has seen the official resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.  Al Jazeera praises Kerry's efforts and presents a round-table discussion on whether the talks are likely to resolve the conflict, which "has defied resolution for six decades, and resisted 20 years of US efforts to broker a solution."   As one participant (Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine) notes: "One can only welcome the resumption of the negotiations, because in the end the only way to resolve this conflict is through an agreement. One way or another you are going to end up with the sides agreeing to some sort of neutral acceptable arrangement. And given how far apart the sides have become, both before, and certainly since 2010, it was always going to look like this … without any real expectation of any immediate breakthrough."  He also pointed out the importance of international support for changing conditions "on the ground" - improvements in the daily life of the Palestinians, for example - as the talks get underway.  These are after all talks about the talks - setting an agenda for the final talks.  Daniel Levy in an August 1 opinion article in Haaretz discusses whether Netanyahu has entered peace talks "to do business or to filibuster".  To Levy the most positive outcome of the talks would be for Netanyahu to deliver a historic peace.  "That would mean belatedly acknowledging the 1967 lines and ceasing to introduce expansionist territorial demands via the backdoor of “security needs”. More significantly, it would mean acknowledging that a collective history, narrative and set of rights is not something reserved only for the Jewish people. Either one must drop all talk of recognizing a Jewish state or one must deal with the legitimacy of a second narrative, a Palestinian narrative."  Pessimistically, though, Levy notes "Whether in relation to the Palestinians in the territories or the Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, Netanyahu’s entire discourse and actions, including his current promotion of the Prawer plan, indicate that he has crossed no Rubicon of understanding.  All of which means that peace will probably have to await a new Israeli leadership and/or mindset. But it does not render the U.S. peace effort a wasted exercise."  Pointing out the stress that the peace talks put on Bibi's coalition, Levy writes "the forty-plus remaining months of the Obama Administration could challenge Israeli rejectionism more than its dismissive responses to this week’s talks would have us believe."

Climate ChangeTomDispatch in a July 30 post reminds us of the ongoing and increasing dangers of climate change, a subject noticeably lacking in the corporate media news-and weather-casts.  William DeBuys asks 'the crucial question for Phoenix, for the Colorado, and for the greater part of the American West: How long will the water hold out?"  Sobering reading:  "Until now, the ever-more-complex water delivery systems of that basin have managed to meet the escalating needs of their users....Those days are gone.  The Lower Basin states [California, Arizona, and Nevada] now get only their annual entitlement and no more. Unfortunately for them, it’s not enough, and never will be."  Then there is the even worse situation on the Rio Grande regarding New Mexico and Texas: "In May, New Mexico marked the close of the driest two-year period in the 120 years since records began to be kept. Its largest reservoir, Elephant Butte, which stores water from the Rio Grande, is effectively dry."