Blogging on Meds

This is rich. Apparently, Bjork’s music might cause a revolution:

Foreign entertainers who have taken part in activities that China deems a threat to its sovereignty will not be allowed to perform here, according to new rules posted Thursday on the Web site of the Ministry of Culture.

…

The rules on performers may have come about after an outburst in March by Bjork, the popular Icelandic singer. She used a concert in Shanghai to advocate Tibetan independence. She shouted “Tibet! Tibet!” after performing “Declare Independence,” a song from her 2007 album, “Volta.” The outcry drew sharp criticism from Chinese Internet users and praise from international supporters of an independent Tibet.

AP

John McCain, the same guy who once called the media his “base,” today accused the media of being biased towards Obama. He put out a video of various members of the press fawning over Obama. I have to admit that the video is actually pretty funny. Still, this whole line of attack shows you that John McCain is truly desperate. He’s trying to divert attention from recent events that have driven a stake through the heart of his campaign, which rests on his foreign policy “experience.”

• Iraqi PM Maliki said that Obama’s 16-month plan sounded pretty good, and even after the White House said he’d been misquoted, Maliki’s spokesperson repeated it. Then, after McCain amazingly tried to claim that he knows Maliki and Maliki didn’t really mean it, Maliki said it again.
• Bush recently sent the third-highest US State Department official to a meeting that involved Iran and European nations, the most high-level US-Iran engagement in nearly 30 years. Obama’s been calling for dialogue with Iran for some time now.
• Obama has said for a long time that we need more troops in Afghanistan, a position that McCain adopted (and then quickly revised) after hearing that the military has also called for more soldiers as the situation worsens there.

So, all of his main talking points on foreign policy have been repudiated, and Obama’s gotten stronger during the Mideast portion of his trip. McCain is right to try to turn attention to something else — wouldn’t you if people suddenly found out your opponent’s ideas make far more sense than yours — but does he really want to pick on the media? The media have consistently treated numerous McCain gaffes as jokes instead of examples that show how utterly confused he is about basic world affairs and domestic policies (just today, he talked about problems on the Iraq-Pakistan border, two countries that don’t share a border). If he turns on the media, they might actually do their jobs and scrutinize him a bit more. He can’t really afford that right now.

Here’s the video:

Obama Love

Jim Rutenberg has a story in the NYT, on the website right now, suggesting that “the news media are imbalanced in their coverage of the [presidential] candidates.”

The imbalance has appeared in various analyses of the news coverage.

He goes on to cite the Tyndall Report, which notes that, in June, the three primetime newscasts devoted 48 minutes of coverage to McCain and 114 on Obama. He leads with the fact that there’s a huge contingent of domestic and international reporters accompanying Obama on his swing through Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Oh yeah, and Obama’s been on more magazine covers. It’s a fair point that Obama’s gotten more coverage than McCain has, and there are obvious reasons why the media is giving Obama more airtime, some of which are spelled out in the article. But the real imbalance has more to do with how they’ve been covered so far. For example, the media helped to drive the rumors that Obama might — just might — be a secret Muslim and may have attended a madrassa. There were stories about Michelle Obama’s militancy, how the Obamas attended a black separatist church, how Obama flip-flopped on public financing (fair game) without noting that McCain opted in to the program to secure a loan during the primaries and then backed out, something that only the FCC can grant. That is, he’s breaking the law. But there wasn’t much about that. There are plenty of these types of examples, and the folks at Media Matters have them chronicled, including this excellent piece. 

McCain may get less airtime than Obama, but he ridiculously more positive coverage. 

Avi Ohayon — Associated Press; Reuters

John McCain may have set a record for the fastest flip-flop in history. Earlier today, McCain gave a speech, timed to follow Obama’s Iraq speech, on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. McCain said that more troops were needed in Afghanistan, and he said that he’d send an additional three brigades to the country to shore up NATO forces. The following is from his campaign website:

John McCain Supports Sending At Least Three Additional Brigades To Afghanistan. Our commanders on the ground say they need these troops, and thanks to the success of the surge, these forces are becoming available, and our commanders in Afghanistan must get them.

Now, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said only a couple of weeks ago that he didn’t have the troops to send into Afghanistan.

I don’t have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq.

So, it seems that the only way that McCain would be able to follow through on his pledge would be to pull three brigades from Iraq and send them to Afghanistan. Of course, as soon as his speech was over, McCain told reporters that what he really meant was that the three brigades would be comprised of NATO and US troops, not just US troops, as he had just said in his speech. This is just another example of the kind of “straight talk” we can expect if McCain wins the presidency.

This is pretty big news, not just from a foreign policy perspective, but also with respect to the presidential race : Bush has authorized William Burns, the 3rd highest ranking US diplomat, to attend a meeting in Geneva on Iran’s nuclear program, where he’ll interact with Saeed Jalili, Iran’s negotiator.

Bush has long resisted any direct high-level contact between the US and Iran, preferring to try to browbeat the Iranians into giving up their nuclear drive, and McCain’s taken an even harder line on Iran. Obama, of course, has said that we should negotiate with Iran from a position of strength, including meeting with Iran’s leader, in order to help our situation in Iraq. Now, Bush has pivoted in his last few months in office towards Obama’s approach. Wow. McCain has to be fuming, and I bet John Bolton’s crapping himself right now.

From the New York Times:

The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago.

According to the article, at least one and possibly as many as 3 brigages out of 15 could come home for a while (emphasis mine).

The most optimistic course of events would still leave 120,000 to 130,000 American troops in Iraq, down from the peak of 170,000 late last year after Mr. Bush ordered what became known as the “surge” of additional forces. Any troop reductions announced in the heat of the presidential election could blur the sharp differences between the candidates, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, over how long to stay in Iraq. But the political benefit might go more to Mr. McCain than Mr. Obama. Mr. McCain is an avid supporter of the current strategy in Iraq. Any reduction would indicate that that strategy has worked and could defuse antiwar sentiment among voters.

What?! First of all, this isn’t a “reduction” at all. Troop levels in Iraq in January 2007, when the surge was announced, were about 130,000. The surge brigades, all five of them, were supposed to pull out of Iraq this summer, so this is not news at all. Secondly, this supposed “reduction” does nothing to indicate that the “strategy” has worked! Could it be possible that the military is just reducing the surge brigades on schedule like it said it would? Journalist Steven Lee Myers states that:

Such a withdrawal would be a striking reversal from the nadir of the war in 2006 and 2007.

How? How would this be a striking reversal of a policy that the President said would be reversed in the summer of 2008? The 5 surge brigades were supposed to be in Iraq for one year. Now, they are coming back, as scheduled. There is no reduction!

The Guardian Reported that Royal Navy warships in the Gulf intercepted 23 tonnes of hash, cocaine, and opium. Sales of the drugs are said to be funding the Taliban. The Royal Nay’s regional commander said:

The scourge of illegal drugs is a vital source of funding for the Taliban warlords who seek violence against Afghan, British and Nato forces. Our mission in Afghanistan is one of absolute importance, and by seizing these drugs we have dealt a significant blow to the illegal trade.

It’s a good catch by the Royal Navy, but I’m not sure “significant” is the right word. Try miniscule, maybe.

According to the 2008 U.N. World Drug Report, Afghanistan last year produced 8,200 metric tonnes of opium alone, accouting for 92% of the world’s supply of the drug. So, if the Navy’s haul was mostly opium, that’s 0.28% of what Afghanistan produced last year. According to the same U.N. report, drug busts in 2006 resulted in the seizure of nearly 384 tonnes of raw and prepared opium, which is about 4.7% of today’s total opium production in Afghanistan. Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the U.N.’s Office of Drug Crime, estimated that the Taliban earned $100 million from the drug trade in 2007. The number jumped to between $200 million to $400 million if other drug-related activities are included. That’s a lot of money, certainly enough to finance an insurgency and to recruit. Can we get Monsanto in there to give Afghani farmers some genetically modified seeds?

Rahmat Gul/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Dan Eggen and Paul Kane have an article in the Washington Post suggesting that recent bills on war funding, and FISA, along with the US agreeing at the G8 summit to halve carbon emmissions by 2050, have given the President political victories because the White House showed the ability to compromise. I am not sure how you get to that conclusion when you actually look at the details.

On FISA, let’s just call it what it is: Democratic capitulation, seemingly because of fear that the issue would make Democrats look weak on security, Obama’s supposed soft spot, in November. Since the President agreed to follow the new law (are things this bad that Democrats consider getting the President to agree to follow the law a legistlative victory?), the Democrats gave the telecoms immunity, as long as the the telecoms could show that the Attorney General or the President had assured them that turning over Americans’ phone and web records without a warrant was perfectly legal. That’s a pretty low bar, but of course the story is that the President broke the law by conducting domestic surveillance without a warrant, and thanks to the new bill, no one will ever have to hear about how the White House used the telecoms to obtain Americans’ information without a warrant. So, there wasn’t much of a compromise here. This is pretty much the same story as last August, when the 6-month “updated” FISA bill, aka the Protect America Act, was passed. Patrick Radden Keefe explained in Slate why that was also Democratic capitulation.

On War Funding: It’s true that the President agreed to the passage of the G.I. bill, which he opposed all along, and extended unemployment benefits to secure $162 in funding for the war operations, but in this case, he had no choice. He faced a veto-proof majority in Congress. Republicans, already worried about their prosepects in November, sided with Democrats on economics and support for the soldiers, both of which are big issues. When you don’t have a choice, it’s not much of a compromise.

On the G8 meeting: Yes, the President committed to halving US carbon emmissions by 2050, but he didn’t say how he would do it, and anyway the treaty won’t be negotiated until the end of 2009, so this is an easy decision for him. He can sign it knowing that he doesn’t have to do anything between now and the end of his term to set the country on this goal, or even get the country to agree on this goal. He has to do nothing, and he gets to take credit for trying to be green. Where’s the compromise in that?

The President has not compromised at all.

Former White House press secretary, Tony Snow, died at at the age of 53 after losing his battle with colon cancer. Snow was a columnist and also worked at Fox News before joining the White House. From the White House’s perspective, he was a big upgrade from Scott McClennan, who often got battered by the press corps. Snow was far more engaging, wittier, and seemed much more at ease with the press, even when he knew he was going to go out there and get toasted. Condolences to his family and friends.

McCain’s top economic adviser, Phil Gramm, had this to say about the economy in an interview with the Washington Times (emphasis mine):

“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.” “We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

Now, Gramm is technically correct that the economy isn’t in a recession. The popular definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth (the official arbiter of a recession is a recession-dating group at the National Bureau of Economic Research), and we haven’t had that yet, though growth in both the fourth quarter of 2007 and the first quarter this year was weak. Still, to suggest that Americans are whining about record-high gasoline prices, surging fuel costs, and a big hit to their wealth via declining home prices is outright callous, not to mention an idiotic political move. Needless to say, Obama jumped all over Gramm’s comments.

“I want all of you to know that America already has one Dr. Phil. We don’t need another one when it comes to the economy – we need somebody to actually solve the economy.”

The McCain camp realized how bad Gramm’s comments were, so McCain immediately went out and distanced himself from his top economic adviser, and he also emailed reporters a video of him bashing his point man on economics:

So, Mcain has admitted that he doesn’t know anything about economics, and now he thinks that his top economic adviser is wrong on the economy. This was supposed to be the week where McCain focused every day on the economy, and so far it’s been a disaster. Is there anyone in his camp who knows anything about economics?

The strange tale of Max Mosley, the head of Formula One, who was caught on video in a Nazi-themed sex orgy with five prostitutes, gets stranger. He’s suing the News of the World, which secretly videotaped the orgy, for an invasion of privacy. Mosley claimed that he was doing something in private with five consenting women, and the only reason he’s under fire is because his father was the leader of the British Union of Fascists and Hitler’s friend.

Mr Mosley was caught on video by the News of the World with five women in an underground “torture chamber” in Chelsea, where he spent several hours allegedly indulging in sado-masochistic sex. The Oxford-educated former barrister, who is president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), reenacted a concentration camp scene in which he played the role of both guard and inmate. Speaking in German and brandishing a leather whip, he beat the women after allowing himself to be subjected to a humiliating inspection for lice and an interrogation in chains.

In his defense, Mosley said that he could think of “few things more unerotic than Nazi roleplay.” Clearly, he’s never heard of stalags.

Today, McCain flip-floppity-flopped by reverting to an earlier promise to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term in 2013, a promise that he’d abandoned as recently as April. No, he’s not reneging on his promise to extend the Bush tax cuts or cut the corporate income tax rate. Instead, McCain claims that since he’ll have basically won the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by 2013, all the money saved from waging the wars will go to eliminating the deficit. From Politico:

The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.

In other news, McCain has also found a cure for cancer, diabetes, and obesity, all of which will save the US health care system so much money that every American will have health care.

Just in time for the July 4 weekend, the LA Times reported that the Justice Department is thinking about letting the FBI open investigations on people it suspects might be terrorists without, you know, evidence or any suspicion of wrongdoing. Instead, the FBI would investigate anyone, including Americans, who fit a terrorist “profile.” On top of that, the rules would allow for FBI agents to consider race and ethnicity when trying to sort out who exactly is a terrorist. That’s bad news for Arabs and Muslims, not to mention privacy and Freedom. There’s this gem from the LA Times story (italics mine):

Currently, FBI agents need specific reasons — such as evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated — to investigate U.S. citizens and legal residents. The new policy, law enforcement officials told the Associated Press, would let agents open preliminary terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, were deemed suspicious.

For all practical purposes, if you’re Arab, Muslim, or generally some shade of brown, you’re now guilty until proven innocent.

(more…)

Charlie Crist, the Republican Governor of Florida, has frequently been mentioned as potential VP pick for John McCain. He clearly wants the job, because today he flip-flopped and gave the environment a big F*ck You by supporting McCain’s plan to drill off the coast for oil and gas. In 2006, Crist opposed Congressional plans, which Bush supported, to expand oil and gas drilling in the coastal areas. After hearing that McCain wants to drill (I’ll save McCain’s energy flip-flops and his apparent lack of knowledge about his own environmental plan for another post), though , Crist pivoted and decided that it was ok to drill after all. The plan probably isn’t going anywhere, despite GOP hopes that $4 per gallon gasoline will create public pressure on Democrats to cave in, or at the very least force them on the defensive on energy policy, but at least now we know what kind of a principled leader Charlie Crist will be if he becomes VP.

Update: I forgot to mention that after Crist decided to back McCain’s plan, Bush also came out in favor of drilling today. Just what McCain needed, a spotlight on the fact that he and Bush are once again in agreement on policy.

For a longer history of the removal of the Cherokee, see here:

“No better symbol exists of the pain and suffering of the Trail Where They Cried than the Cherokee Rose (pictured at top of page). The mothers of the Cherokee grieved so much that the chiefs prayed for a sign to lift the mother’s spirits and give them strength to care for their children. From that day forward, a beautiful new flower, a rose, grew wherever a mother’s tear fell to the ground. The rose is white, for the mother’s tears. It has a gold center, for the gold taken from the Cherokee lands, and seven leaves on each stem that represent the seven Cherokee clans that made the journey. To this day, the Cherokee Rose prospers along the route of the “Trail of Tears”. The Cherokee Rose is now the official flower of the State of Georgia.“

Everyone sort of loves Canada, or at the very least has very few bad things to say about Canuck Nation. Her people are all pretty friendly, intelligent, make some mean maple syrup, and they rule the sport of hockey. I lived there for 4 years, and it’s a lovely place. However, Canada’s got a dark side as well. I was completely ignorant of Canada’s history with the Native Canadian population (and pretty much its history in general), so it was shocking to read that the Canadian government in the 1920s forced Native children between the ages of 7-16 to attend residential schools that were “dedicated to eradicating the languages, traditions and cultural practices of Native Canadians…“ It gets worse, though: “Children were forced to leave their parents and were harshly punished for speaking their own languages or practicing their religions.” As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Canadian government “has admitted that sexual and phsyical abuse in the schools was widespread.” The schools were opened in 1920 and only began shutting down in the 1970s, so we’re talking about 50 years of the children of an entire race being forcibly assimilated, harrassed, punished, and abused. Not surprisingly, the schools have been linked to “the widespread incidence of alcoholism, suicide and family violence in many native communities.” Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, apologized to Native Canadians last week, and the government took other steps, including a C$1.85 billion payout to surviving students, to start to make amends.

I guess I shouldn’t be shocked considering that Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren forcibly removed thousands of Native Americans from the South in the 1830s following the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. The Choctaw, Seminole, Creek, Chicasaw, and Cherokee tribes were all relocated to the West, mainly to Oklahoma. The Choctaw were the first to go, after being coerced into signing a treaty giving up their land. One of the Choctaw leaders remarked:

“We as Choctaws rather chose to suffer and be free, than live under the degrading influence of laws, which our voice could not be heard in their formation.”

A Choctaw Chief said that the removal had been “a trail of tears and death.” Out of the 15,000 members of the tribe who were removed, approximately 5,000 died on the long journey, which was undertaken in the winter and for which the US Army did not bring enough food or supplies. The Cherokee were removed in 1838, and out of 17,000 who were forced West, about 4,000 died. The Cherokee called their route “Nunna daul Tsuny” or “The Trail Where They Cried.”

I don’t know why I thought that Canada would be any different. I guess people are just bastards everywhere.

Upon seeing the Choctaw removal, Alexis de Tocqueville said:

“In the whole scene there was an air of ruin and destruction, something which betrayed a final and irrevocable adieu; one couldn’t watch without feeling one’s heart wrung. The Indians were tranquil, but sombre and taciturn. There was one who could speak English and of whom I asked why the Chactas were leaving their country. “To be free,” he answered, could never get any other reason out of him. We … watch the expulsion … of one of the most celebrated and ancient American peoples.”

For months now, Egypt has been borkering talks between Israel and Hamas, and it looks like both sides have agreed to a temporary cease-fire. This is potentially good news for both sides, as Israeli towns in the Southern part of the country might finally see some relief from daily rocket attacks, and the economic blockade of Gaza could be partially lifted. Of course, this is the Middle East, and past cease-fires haven’t held for long, so there is plenty of reason to be cautious. Israel has threatened a wide-scale incursion of Gaza if the rocket attacks don’t stop, so it’s critical that the cease-fire holds. An Israeli incursion into Gaza to wipe out Hamas would undoubtedly lead to large civilian casualties given that Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth (in 2005, the UN ranked the Palestinian Territories 13th most densely populated out of 241 countries). Plus, Israel might be far more heavy-handed in Gaza than it normally would be given the debacle in Lebanon when they fought Hezbollah. The Israeli military might have something to prove after fighting Hezbollah to a stand-still, which suggests that a Gaza battle could be especially brutal.

Israel has been negotiating on three fronts recently, with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria. Some analysts are hinting that the reason for this three-pronged diplomatic push is to take the pressure off of Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, who’s caught up in a campaign finance scandal, but it seems like the indirect Syria-Israel talks originally began last year, before the scandal was really out in the open, so I’m not sure if that’s correct.

Anyway, the talks with Syria, conducted through Turkey, were revealed a few weeks, and the two sides just wrapped up two days of talks in Turkey. The broad outline of any deal between the two would be the return of the Golan Heights to Syria for Syria giving up support for Hamas and Hezbollah, normalizing ties with Israel, and working out details on sharing water and outlining borders. With respect to the possible deal with Hezbollah, Israel would swap Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese man who was given four life sentences for killing four people, including a four year old girl, in an attack in 1979, for two Israeli soldiers that Hezbollah captured in 2006. 

Considering that Bush was in Israel just a few weeks ago and called Obama’s suggestion to negotiate with Cuba, Syria, and Iran similar to Chamberlin’s appeasement of Hitler, I wonder when we’ll hear from Bush on Israel’s new-found diplomatic push. Surely Israel’s decision to negotiate with two terrorist groups and a state-sponsor of terrorism is appeasement according to Bush’s logic, right? Wrong. The White House fully supports the cease-fire. It’d be nice if some reporters pressed Bush on this point.

Peace on the horizon?

Staying with the same-sex theme, The Guardian notes that:

“Scans reveal homosexual men and heterosexual women have symmetrical brains, with the right and left hemispheres almost exactly the same size. Conversely, lesbians and straight men have asymmetrical brains, with the right hemisphere significantly larger than the left.”

Same-Sex marriages started in California, and the first couple to get married was a lesbian couple ages 87 and 84. Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon are gay rights activists in San Francisco and have been together for over 50 years. Mazzeltov!

Of course, the law will be challenged on the November ballot, and in 2000, 61% of voters approved prop 22, which defined marriage as the union between a man and a woman. Although a recent poll found that 51% supported same-sex marriages, there’s a lot of work to be done between now and November.

Martin and Lyon with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.