The K.F. Stone Weekly

An Infinitesimally Tiny Breath of Fresh Air?

    We begin this week with a solemn oath: this will not be another article about those asinine A.I.G. bonuses.  For when you get down to it, what is left to say or write that has yet to be said or written? 

   Nada

   Gar nichts

   rcs oua

   ничто

  

    zéró

  

    Gornisht

   OK, you get the point.

   So just what is this piece about?

   Well, how's about Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran and -- just possibly -- a teeny, tiny breath of fresh air?

    "How in the name of all that's logical is this even remotely possible"? I can hear you asking.  Your misgivings are completely understandable.  For after all, Pakistan is a political powder keg sitting astride a nuclear arsenal; Afghanistan, that "graveyard of empire," is like something out of Pirandello -- "35 Tribes in Search of an Authority"; and Iran . . . well, what can be said about that charter member of the "Axis of Evil" that is even remotely optimistic?

   Looking around the regional chessboard, we find the following moves being made:

• In Pakistan, American missile-equipped Predator aircraft have been drone-dropping tons of ordinance on the suspected hiding places of top al-Qaeda leaders.  And although it appears that these missile strikes are beginning to take a serious toll on Osama bin Laden's closest allies, the Pakistani government is expressing grave concerns about its territorial sovereignty. The U.S., you see, is no longer asking, informing -- even telling -- Pakistani officials about these attacks before they are launched.  This has the effect of further weakening an already pathetic Asif Ali Zadari. Could Pakistan be headed for yet another military takeover? 
• With regards to Afghanistan, just today, President Obama announced that we will  be sending in an additional 17,000 American troops.  And, for added measure, we will be committing an added 4,000 personnel whose job it will be to train Afghan security forces.  Although the president has yet to set specific benchmarks for Afghanistan -- or Pakistan for that matter -- he is insisting that the two fractured countries "find ways to work together and transform their societies."  Good luck!  Afghanistan has a 2000-plus year history of tribal rivalry that has bedeviled folks from Alexander the Great to Alexander Haig.  Expecting a democracy to arise in poppy-infested, poly-cultural Afghanistan, is one of history's most sleep-depriving dreams.  
• And then there is the Islamic Republic of Iran. . . 

   A week ago, President Obama released a special video message for all those celebrating Noruz, which marks the arrival of Spring and the beginning of the New Year for millions in Iran and around the world.  After wishing the Iranian people a happy New Year and reminding them of his administration's continuing commitment to "a future of honest and respectful diplomacy," he addressed the nation's leaders directly:

   "You too have a choice.  The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations.  You have that right -- but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization . . ."

  In his response to what was without question a proffered olive branch, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, "They chant the slogan of change, but no change is seen in practice . . . . He [Obama] insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day.  If you are right that change has come, where is that change?  Make it clear for us what has changed?"  Khamenei also "joked" that he hoped that the translation of his remarks from Farsi into English would not be given over to "Zionist translators."

   So where oh where is this "infinitesimally tiny breath of fresh air?"

   Right in front of our face, that's where.

   It turns out that yesterday, the Islamic Republic of Iran announced that it will "join the United States in dispatching official delegations" to two international conferences on Afghanistan.  For its part, the Obama administration has "welcomed Teheran's intended participation" at one in the Netherlands, and likely a second in Moscow, which is opening in just a few hours from now.

   Amazing!  Iran and the United States potentially on the same side of an issue?  

   What gives?

   What "gives" can be summed up in one word: drugs.  

   Simply stated, the Islamic Republic of Iran has a terrible -- and growing -- drug problem; a problem it shares in common with the United States.  

   A week ago, Irani drug enforcement officials seized 4.5 tons of opium, hashish and other drugs from nine alleged smugglers in two cities near Teheran.  Two days later, police in eastern Iran (near the Afghanistan border) stopped a pickup truck packed with a quarter ton of opium hidden under the vehicle's floorboards.  Moreover, in the past two years, the drug war in Iran has cost the government in excess of $600 million, with approximately 3,700 security officials killed and 11,000 maimed in more than 12,000 clashes between traffickers and narcs -- this according to a United Nations report.  Additionally, in the single year between 2006 and 2007, drug seizures jumped 35% for heroin, 37% for opium and 52% for hashish.  Total drug seizures for 2007 alone were in excess of 618 tons.  Drug addiction has quickly become Iran's number one public health problem.  Of late, in an attempt to hamstring the smugglers, Iran has been digging canals, raising earthen berms and laying barbed wire.  But still the drugs flow in "sometimes strapped to camels crossing the desert, sometimes protected by well-armed gangsters equipped with satellite technology . . ."

   In this, Iran and the United States have overlapping interests.  It is part of the United States' program to get Afghani farmers to stop growing poppies -- the sale of which funds the Taliban -- and start growing edibles.  If the United States succeeds in its goal, Iran benefits.  If Iran realizes a dramatic lessening in the amount of drugs smuggled across its eastern border, the United States gains. 

   How to do this?  By creating a more stable Afghanistan.  That's how.

   "Iran and the United States have a fundamental point of interest in the region vis-a-vis Afghanistan," said Sadegh Zibakalam, a professor of political science at Teheran University.  "Both want to see a moderate, Democratic, stable Afghanistan because if there is chaos in Afghanistan, it means opium in Iran and Afghan refugees in Iran."

   Towards the end of stabilizing Afghanistan, diplomats from Iran and the United States are going to be meeting with one another at a conference on that very subject to be held in the Hague next week.  Up until now, the Iranis have steadfastly stayed away from international diplomatic conferences that involved the U.S.  Moreover, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization conference on Afghanistan, which opens today in Moscow, will be attended by the Irani Deputy Foreign Minister, and the American Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.  And while these two events may not represent a hurricane of change, they are that infinitesimally tiny breath of fresh air that can give one hope.

   It is true that many Iranis are "wary of giving America a possible public-relations victory without getting anything in return," as reported in today's Los Angeles Times. A recent editorial in the conservative Sisat Rooz newspaper complained that "Whenever they need us, they use our influence; but as they reach their objectives, they treat us as a major threat in the region."

   Nothing new here.  What is new -- and hopeful -- however, is that some Iranian hard-liners have begun to welcome the idea of cooperating with the U.S. and NATO in "helping to secure Afghanistan, calling it a victory for Iranian steadfastness."  One Irani legislator, Hamid Reza Haji-Babai, went so far as to say that "The more the Islamic Republic of Iran interacts in the regional and international arenas the better.  Easing tensions between Iran and the U.S., he said, "can be achieved within these interactions and participation in conferences."

   This news -- coming from a region that has for so long been rife with fetid stagnation -- could indeed be that infinitesimally tiny breath of fresh area we have been craving. . .

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

    

    

Nothing New Under the Sun

  

Back in 1873, the great Mark Twain teamed up with the lamentably long-forgotten Charles Dudley Warner on a marvelous satiric novel they called The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.   The novel, which basically deals with the efforts of a poor Tennessee family named Hawkins to get rich through the sale of 75,000 acres of unimproved land, satirizes greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America. Peopled with avaricious Washington lobbyists, the rapacious rich and even a woman who aspires to become a doctor, The Gilded Age is both insightful and delightfully tart-tongued.  And, with only a handful of minor changes, it could easily be a satire on our current addiction to hyper-wealth and celebrity.  I've got to believe that if Twain and Warner were writing their novel today, they would have Silas "Si" Hawkins -- the fellow with the 75,000 acres -- peddling "credit- default swaps", "collateralized debt obligations" or "derivatives" instead undeveloped land.  And who knows?  Maybe Phillip Sterling -- the novel's upper-crust land speculator -- would be into "hedge funds."

   The Twain-Warner collaboration not only sold a lot of books; The Gilded Age became the name for an era which lasted from roughly 1880 to 1893.  Historically, this "Gilded Age" was characterized by extreme wealth polarization, a shrinking Middle Class, the construction of all those so-called "cottages" along Newport's Bellevue Avenue and the coming to prominence of such legendary names as Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Fisk, Gould, and Rockefeller. This "Gilded Age" is best personified in that great world-class trencherman, "Diamond Jim" Brady.    

   Greed is greed, Avarice is avarice. Undue influence is undue influence.  Indeed, as Koheleth noted so many eons ago, "There is nothing new under the sun." No matter whether it be in the middle of America's first "Gilded Age," or today -- when we are (hopefully) nearing the tail end of our second -- the sense of entitlement claimed by the few at the expense of the many remains unchanged.  Unchanging too has been the "gildsters'" ability to both manipulate and maneuver the levers of government for their own personal benefit.  

   Without question, America's second "Gilded Age" began precisely 100 years after the first -- in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan.  For in slashing the marginal tax rate for the nation's top earners from 70% to 28% and then putting the word "deregulation" on everyone's lips, the "Great Communicator" green-lighted that concatenation of financial tricks, products and processes that would make multi-billionaires of the few, and debt-ridden fools of us all.  Over the course of nearly 30 years, America would go from being the world's greatest creditor nation to becoming by far its greatest debtor.  Reagan and his team did everything in their power to enrich their allies, but in the process put America in grave risk that a bunch of barely-friendly nations could easily determine our financial fate.  Moreover-- and here we must all share tons of blame -- we went from being a country of savers to one in which living beyond one's means was the norm.  Remember when common wisdom held that with the exception of a house or perhaps an automobile, you paid cash? 

    One of the biggest and most obvious differences between the first and second "Gilded Age" deals with how -- and from where -- all the great wealth was made.  In the first, it came almost exclusively from things manufactured right here in the good old U.S. of A.  Whether it was in Carnegie's steel mills, Pullman's railroad yards or Rockefeller's oil fields, we mined, made and manufactured right here at home.  Today, of course, most everything we purchase -- even if it is carrying the name of an American conglomerate -- was mined, made or manufactured in China, Bangladesh, Thailand, or someplace whose capital most of us cannot name.  Why is this?  Because one of the results of all this deregulation is that it is far, far cheaper -- and thus far, far more profitable -- to manufacture abroad than to remain here at home.  For in China, Bangladesh and Namibia one can get by paying a dollar or two a day, and does not have to worry about unions, pensions or the like.  That's good for American manufacturers; that's horrible for American workers.  Indeed, over the past generation, our chief exports have been jobs and plants . . . the manufacturing sort.

     The first Gilded Age came to a crashing end with the Panic of 1893 -- a deep depression that lasted for more than four years.  Finally, with the election of 1896, a major political realignment was set in motion; it would eventually lead to the Progressive Era -- a time of reform, muckraking and a shifting of priorities.  It was the era of the Clayton Antitrust Act, the direct election of senators, Teddy Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffans and Robert M. La Follette, Sr.  These were the people -- and this was the energy -- that led directly to the New Deal, the next truly great realignment in our political history.

   It may well be that the election of Barack Obama and a strongly Democratic Congress spells the end of America's second "Gilded Age."  The challenges we face -- economically, politically, even spiritually -- are not all that dissimilar from those facing America 100 years ago.  Like that earlier America, we have seen a vast middle class sacrificed for the sake of an avaricious elite.  Just as in 19th century America, those who raise their voices in protest have been quickly labeled -- then as "anarchists" and "socialists," today as "Marxists" and "liberals."  Back then much of the fight was carried by on a generation of writers and activists using a new medium: the mass-circulation magazine.  Today of course, it's the Internet and Blogosphere. 

   If indeed Koheleth was right that there is "nothing new under the sun," perhaps then this second "Gilded Age" is going to wind down and, like its namesake, take its place on the pages of a thousand musty history books.  However, in order for this to occur, it will take a willingness to pull together, to relearn the use of the first person plural -- "we" -- to once again dare to dream, to create and to get our hands dirty, and to learn the lesson of patience. 

    Social, political and economic problems do not arise overnight; neither does their amelioration.  We have finally broken the mold which shaped so much of the past generation.  Now it is time to work, to struggle and to strive.  There are going to be plenty of roadblocks along the way; plenty of pointing fingers and shaking fists; more than enough blame and recrimination for a thousand scandals.  But know this:

   Together we can like an earlier generation, turn a "Gilded Age" into one that is truly golden.

     ©2009 Kurt F. Stone         

    

The Cosmic 'Oy Vey'

  From almost the first moment it was known that President Barack Obama -- per the recommendation of National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair -- was going to name Ambassador Charles W. "Chas" Freeman, Jr. to head his National  Intelligence Council, that appointment began its clockwise swirl  around the political toilet bowl.  Less than forty-eight hours ago Freeman, in withdrawing his name from consideration for the post -- which requires no approval -- let fly a stream of invective against the folks he believed were responsible for operating the plunger: the so-called "Israel Lobby."  In the email announcing his withdrawal, Freeman decried the "barrage of libelous distortions of my record [that] would not cease upon my entry into office."  Freeman further stated that, "The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to a factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East."

   Oy Vey!

   The "flushing" of Chas. Freeman raises several obvious questions:

• Who precisely is Chas. Freeman?
• What sorts of accusatory red flags were being raised by what sorts of folks?
• Were those accusations merited?
• In the long run, what does it all mean?

     First things first: Chas Freeman [1943- ], a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law, is a career diplomat who served as President Nixon's principal interpreter during his 1972 visit to China, and later (1989-1992) as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Among his many postings and positions, he also served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Clinton Administration.  In 1997, he succeeded Senator George McGovern as President of the Middle East Policy Council, a group which "strives to ensure that a full range of U.S. interests and views are considered by policy makers." The Council, it should be noted, receives more than 10% of its funding from the Saudi Arabian Government.   

   Reportedly a brash, irascible fellow, Freeman is no stranger to controversy. At various times he has chided Beijing for "not crushing the Tiananmen Square democracy protests sooner," and referred to the Saudi King as "Abdullah the Great."  And, at one time he served on the advisory board of a state-owned Chinese oil company.  But its for his comments about Israel, the so-called "Israel Lobby" and the Middle East that Freeman has become most infamous.  It is also likely that these latter comments and positions were most directly -- though not totally -- responsible for his not becoming the fellow charged with overseeing the National Intelligence Estimates. 

   Freeman lumped Israel's supporters on Capitol Hill, A.I.P.A.C.  [America Israel Public Affairs Committee] and various other pro-Israel groups into a lobby whose aim " . . . is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointments of people who dispute the wisdom of its views."  One result of this, he claimed, is "the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any options for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics."

   Further, in a 2005 speech Freeman gave before the Washington-based National Council on U.S.-Arab relations, he referred to Israel's "high-handed and self-defeating policies" stemming from "the occupation and settlement of Arab lands," which he termed "inherently violent."

   Freeman's claim that its impossible to discuss "any options" that may be "opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics," flies in the face of political reality.  Over the past several years, the U.S. has both supported and promoted a Palestinian election that "the ruling faction in Israeli politics" obviously opposed; the U.S. refused Israel weapons they may well have used for a preemptive attack on Iran's nuclear facilities; and, the U.S. adopted a policy of direct talks with a regime that denies that the Holocaust ever occurred and promises that one day it will wipe Israel off the face of the earth.  And our new president -- whose Chief of Staff is the son of an Israeli-born former member of the Irgun -- had his first televised interview on al jezeera TV.  This is walking in lockstep with "the ruling faction in Israeli politics?"

   Earth to Mr. Freeman: what in the world are you talking about? 

   Talk about a cosmic 'Oy Vey'! [Note: the term 'cosmic oy vey' is defined by its creator, journalist Aaron David Miller, as "The tendency of many American Jews to worry about everything, without a capacity to identify what is important and what isn't. . ."]

   Interestingly, most of the major Jewish, pro-Israel interest groups, stayed publicly mum about l'affaire Freeman. AIPAC spokesman Josh Block said that his organization "took no position on this matter, and did not lobby the Hill on it." True, Senators Schumer and Lieberman did put in their very public two cents, as well as Republican Representatives Peter Peter Hoekstra (MI) and Mark Steven Kirk (IL) and even Minority Leader John Boehner (OH) who sent a letter of inquiry about Freeman to Inspector General Edward Maguire on March 3rd.  The Weekly Standard's Martin Kramer detailed what he called "Freeman's analytical incompetence," quoting the ambassador as saying, "I'm a very practical man, and my concern is simply this: that there are movements, like Hamas, like Hezbollah, that in recent decades have not done anything against the United States or Americans, even though the United States supports their enemy, Israel."  Kramer also noted that Ambassador Freeman strenuously objected to the U.S. designation of the two aforementioned groups as terrorist organizations, lest "this invite them to extend their operations in the United States or against Americans abroad."    

   Oy Vey!

  Although one can well argue that the Obama Administration needs a couple of in-house contrarians to keep things honest and intellectually stimulating, one wonders about the wisdom of having that contrarian being a "bought man."  Chas. Freeman's ties to both the Saudi Royal Family and Chinese state-run banking interests make his ability to objectively vet intelligence suspect at best, dubious at worst.  And, as much as President Obama may relish the lively give-and-take of debate, intelligence briefings are not the best place for that kind of badinage. As Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post and Neiman Watch noted in a recent article, "Chas. Freeman is a One-Man Destroyer of Groupthink."

   After reading and listening to the cantankerous broadside Freeman issued in announcing "his change of plans," the Obama White House should breath a sigh of relief. Ambassador Freeman was simply not the man for them.

   Or for us.

©2009 Kurt F. Stone

  

What Would General Bovay Say?

  

   History records that on March 20, 1854, a handful of disaffected Whigs, Free Soilers and Democrats assembled in a small frame schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin. Alvan Bovay, the town's only lawyer [and a future Civil War General], was the fellow who had invited them to attend.  The thing that brought them together was their mutual loathing for the newly-enacted "Kansas-Nebraska Act."

   Authored by Illinois Senator Steven A. Douglas, the law granted settlers in the newly-created territories of Kansas and Nebraska the right to determine for themselves whether or not to allow slavery.  Douglas hoped the bill's passage would help ease tensions between North and South, because in his eyes, the act would permit the South to expand slavery to the new territories, while the North still had the right to abolish slavery in their own states.   He was wrong.  Dead wrong.  Opponents -- like the folks up in Ripon -- denounced the law as a terrible, cowardly concession to the South's "Peculiar Institution."

   By the time Bovay's little group departed from the schoolhouse, they had given birth to a new force that would soon sweep the North: the Republican Party. Within less than four months, the party would hold its first official meeting in Jackson, Michigan; within another two years, they would elect Edwin Denison Morse their party's first -- and still longest serving -- national chair.  Precisely why the assembled Republicans chose Morse, a future New York Governor and United States Senator, and not the party's idealistic founder Alvan Bovay, is unknown.  What is known is that in 1874, Bovay -- convinced that "The mission of the Republican Party has ended with the overthrow of slavery and the reconstruction of the old slave states on a free basis . . . " -- he left and joined the fledgling Prohibition Party.

   Bovay's GOP, a party born in idealism and annealed in the fires of adversity used to stand for far more than tax cuts, deregulation and the further enriching of the "haves" and "have-mores."  Bovay's G.O.P., which would become the party of such political titans as Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Fiorello LaGuardia and Jacob Javits -- is a far, far cry from our modern-day version -- that of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Michael Steele, Michelle Bachmann, and Bobby Jindal.

   Or Rush Limbaugh.

   You've got to wonder what Alvan Bovay would think or say about the current shape, direction and leadership of the party he birthed. Would he want to admit membership in a party so weak-willed, so misguided that it is seemingly taking its marching orders from a radio talk-show host?  How might he react to the ceaseless drumbeat of invective; to the mindless catcalls of "Socialist" and "Left-Wing Communist?"  I've got to believe he would be somewhere between dumbfounded and apoplectic. 

   And spinning in his grave.

   The current contretemps with Rush Limbaugh and Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele is but the latest indicator of how far Bovay's party has strayed from it original idealistic path.  Where once the party had positive goals and aspirations -- progress, equity, and equality -- today its raison d'être appears to be nothing more than opposition and the demand for blind loyalty. 

   If Alvan Bovay were still among the living, he would likely at this point ask a handful of questions:

• "Loyalty to what?" 
  
• "Loyalty to whom?" 
  
• "Precisely what is it that you believe?" 
  
• "Who leads you in those beliefs?"
  
• "What is it that shapes, defines and motivates you to action?"  

  To listen to Limbaugh -- or indeed, any of the other so-called "leaders" of the G.O.P. -- that which defines and motivates them is far more often negative than affirmative; far more contrarian than positivist. To today's GOP, the LIBERAL opposition [whom they persist in referring to as the "Democrat," rather than "Democratic" Party] is not merely a bloc that can espouse different ideas, opinions or proposals -- all of which are worthy of debate; no, the opposition is evil incarnate -- an organized conspiracy of LIBERAL sociopaths whose LIBERAL raison d'être is the very destruction of America.

   To listen to the speakers who addressed last week's CPAC [Conservative Political Action Conference] gathering, one might reasonably believe that Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid, Chairman Frank and White House Chief of Staff Emanuel [to name but a few] get up each morning and partake in a conference call with none other than Satan himself.  At the conference, speaker after speaker consistently demeaned, degraded and derogated LIBERALS. As such, these Republicans showed neither what they were for nor where they stood, but rather what -- or who -- they were against, and what -- or who -- was responsible for virtually all our present problems and ills.  And believe me, it wasn't them . . .

  Shortly after Chairman Steele referred to Limbaugh as an "entertainer," whose show is both "incendiary" and "ugly," a firestorm of controversy erupted; so much so that Steele had to back down and "make nice" with the "$400 Million Man."  In his retraction, Steele referred to Limbaugh as a "national conservative leader," and declared that, "There was no attempt on my part to diminish (Limbaugh's) voice or his leadership."  It makes you question what the definition of "conservative" is, and precisely who's in charge of the party.

   It was not a pleasant sight to behold.

   Adding his gleefully cheerful two-cents, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs expressed his "surprise at the speed in which Mr. Steele, the head of the RNC, apologized to the leader of the Republican Party."  Gibbs then suggested that the media ask other Republicans whether they agreed with Limbaugh's hope -- expressed on both his radio show and before CPAC -- that President Obama fails.  

   Score one for the White House. 

   By the way: for those who feel the need to apologize to Rush Limbaugh for something -- for anything -- there's an  I'm Sorry Rush  website which has been established for this very purpose.  Click and enjoy!

   And while we're on the subject of apologies, it might not be a bad idea for Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh and the party one of them leads to issue a blanket apology to Alvan Bovay.  Just as a suggestion, it might go something like this:

   "General Bovay: We sincerely apologize to you and the gentlemen who originally formed the Republican Party.  We apologize for having strayed so far from the ideals with which you created this party -- progress, equity and equality.  We apologize for having allowed our political vision to become so myopic and bedimmed as to be virtually incapable of seeing anyone other than ourselves. . . ." 

   And while you're at it General, would you please be so kind as to express our apologies to Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Fiorello LaGuardia and Jacob Javits as well?  

   What do you say General Bovay?

©2009 Kurt F. Stone