Bill Moyers

If you didn't get a chance to catch it on TV, try to watch these episodes of Bill Moyers Journal:

Sanford Levinson on a new constitutional convention.

Benjamin Barber on how American capitalism has become consumerism and is destroying democracy.*

And Bill himself sees the baseball steroid scandal as a metaphor for our national socio-political situation.

*You can donate to LifeStraw here.

Where Was the Press?

On October 17, 2006, when George W. Bush signed the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2007—a $538 billion military spending bill—he enacted into law a section called “Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies.” In the view of many, this Act substantially changed fundamental laws of the United States, giving Bush—and all future U.S. presidents—new and sweeping powers to use the U.S. military anywhere in the United States, virtually as he sees fit—for disaster relief, crowd control, suppression of public disorder, or any “other condition” that might arise.

News coverage of these significant changes in the law has been virtually nonexistent.

[...]

[Under these provisions], the president could order the Guard of any state into any other state—even if the governors of both states objected. Or the president could choose to use any element of the U.S. military—the Army, Air Force, Navy or Marines—to suppress a protest or carry out practically any kind of domestic action the president desired.

[...]

The law is so vague and far-reaching that numerous, normally conservative military and law enforcement groups, including the National Guard Association, the National Sheriffs’ Association and the Adjutants General Association, have publicly come out against it, pledging their support for a new, bipartisan Senate bill, S. 513, from senators Leahy and Christopher Bond (R.-Mo.) that would overturn all the changes in law that occurred this past October. (There’s an identical, bipartisan companion bill in the House as well.)

It’s striking that even with the National Guard Association itself opposing Bush in this matter, there’s been next to no news coverage.

[...]

The National Governors Association is displeased as well. In rare unanimity, the association called, on February 2, 2007, for the new law to be overturned, saying that it “unnecessarily expanded the president’s authority to federalize the National Guard,” a change “drafted without consultation with the governors and without full discussion or debate.” All 50 U.S. governors have signed on to the association’s letter of opposition—including all 22 Republican governors.

The Adjutants General Association, which represents officers responsible for National Guard training and readiness, also stands in opposition to the Act.

[...]

The National Sheriffs’ Association declared itself (2/20/07) gravely concerned that such empowering language, as well as ambiguity of the new language, particularly its reference to the “other conditions” under which the president can invoke the Act, creates the likelihood that the Act will be invoked more frequently and hastily during such emergencies.

[...]

What does it say about the fourth estate that such significant changes occur in our laws without news media coverage and without the intelligent and vigorous public debate one would hope for in the world’s oldest democracy?

  FAIR

That we're a democracy in name only?

Apparently, this was one of those middle-of-the-night bill additions. Well, to be fair, we really don't need to know about the details of governance, do we?

Friends With Dictators

Unless they're Hugo Chavez.

As a follow-up to the previous post, I thought I'd throw this in from early this month.

On an unusually warm morning in Washington, D.C., last spring, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stood before a pack of reporters for a briefing, one of Africa's most notorious dictators at her side [Teodoro Obiang, president of the tiny, oil-rich nation of Equatorial Guinea].

[...]

Equatorial Guinea has one of the world's highest incomes per capita, but in one of the 10 most corrupt nations on earth, little of that money trickles down. Obiang rules the country with an iron fist: According to State Department reports, suspects have been tortured to death and prisoners raped by police.

[...]

Equatoguinean radio has declared that Obiang has "permanent contact with the Almighty" and therefore can "kill anyone without being called to account." Rice turned to Obiang. "Thank you very much for your presence here," she cooed. "You are a good friend, and we welcome you."

  Mother Jones

The Mother Jones article is actually one about (US) PR firms hired to "put lipstick on a dictator", and ends on this note:

[M]ost rebranding is focused on making it easier for rogues to do business with the White House. And it works: Kazahkstan's Nazarbayev won a meeting with President Bush last September. After employing three PR firms and various policy consultants, Azerbaijan's strongman, Ilham Aliyev, not only got an audience with Bush last April, but Bush subsequently announced that Aliyev "understands that democracy is the wave of the future." If so, he has a long way to go: Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch recalls watching Aliyev's "democracy" in action in 2003. "The government clearly stole the election, and then brutally beat hundreds of people who poured out in the streets in protest. The day after the election, I watched from the roof of a hotel in Baku as thousands of riot police beat protesters unconscious."

Just a different kind of democracy.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Delusional Democracy

As opposed to participatory democracy.

"The debate over Iranian interference in Iraq proceeds without ridicule on the assumption that the United States owns the world."

In crude and brutal societies, the Party Line is publicly proclaimed and must be obeyed -- or else. What you actually believe is your own business and of far less concern. In societies where the state has lost the capacity to control by force, the Party Line is simply presupposed; then, vigorous debate is encouraged within the limits imposed by unstated doctrinal orthodoxy. The cruder of the two systems leads, naturally enough, to disbelief; the sophisticated variant gives an impression of openness and freedom, and so far more effectively serves to instill the Party Line. It becomes beyond question, beyond thought itself, like the air we breathe.

  TomDispatch post

Doubtless Iran's government merits harsh condemnation, including for its recent actions that have inflamed the crisis. It is, however, useful to ask how we would act if Iran had invaded and occupied Canada and Mexico and was arresting U.S. government representatives there on the grounds that they were resisting the Iranian occupation (called "liberation," of course). Imagine as well that Iran was deploying massive naval forces in the Caribbean and issuing credible threats to launch a wave of attacks against a vast range of sites -- nuclear and otherwise -- in the United States, if the U.S. government did not immediately terminate all its nuclear energy programs (and, naturally, dismantle all its nuclear weapons). Suppose that all of this happened after Iran had overthrown the government of the U.S. and installed a vicious tyrant (as the US did to Iran in 1953), then later supported a Russian invasion of the U.S. that killed millions of people (just as the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran in 1980, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians, a figure comparable to millions of Americans). Would we watch quietly?

  Noam Chomsky at TomDispatch - link above

Well, no. But we own the world. So that's different.

The Iranian-American consensus includes the complete elimination of nuclear weapons everywhere (82% of Americans); if that cannot yet be achieved because of elite opposition, then at least a "nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East that would include both Islamic countries and Israel" (71% of Americans). Seventy-five percent of Americans prefer building better relations with Iran to threats of force.

[...]

A reasonable resolution of the present crisis would permit Iran to develop nuclear energy, in accord with its rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but not nuclear weapons. Is that outcome feasible? It would be, given one condition: that the U.S. and Iran were functioning democratic societies in which public opinion had a significant impact on public policy.

So, I guess it's the unreasonable resolution then?

Can we rightfully call ourselves a democracy when the people's desires have no bearing on the country's policies? Have a look at that Chomsky essay for a list of ways public opinion differs from current policy.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.