The Agonist - Analysis

Vying for Favor in France

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 12:57:11 -0700

Andrew Hansen | March 16

CFR - French President Jacques Chirac's recent announcement that he will not seek a third term (Spiegel) formally cleared the way for a new generation of French candidates to battle it out in next month's polls. Presidential hopefuls for the two-round election (ElectionGuide.org) must face an “anti-elitist wave” and woo a skeptical electorate, 60 percent of whom doubt the ability (AP) of either the left or the right to govern.

Leading the pack is Nicolas Sarkozy, head of the center-right UMP and current interior minister. He advocates a number of economic modernizations: loosening labor laws, eliminating limits on overtime work, reducing public debt, and trimming the ranks of France's army of civil servants. “France has been discouraging initiative and punishing success for the past 25 years,” he wrote in his book, Testimony. His tough immigration policies and indelicate language during the November 2005 riots may hamper his ability (OpenDemocracy) to earn the trust of France's marginalized ethnic communities, largely of African and North African descent, where voter registration is on the rise (WashPost).

more election news with lots of links

Vista in the Enterprise

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 04:49:17 -0700

Joe Hernick | Information Week | March 16

Why deploy an absolute resource hog of a desktop OS when the trend for custom solutions is toward Web-based applications?

Short, paranoid answer: Because most of us will have no choice, as the vast, bloated hardware-software conspiracy keeps rolling along.

The elephant in the boardroom is that Vista is designed for home users seeking snazzy multimedia features to make their Windows boxes more Mac-like.

But think about it from a functional standpoint: Didn't Windows 95 do pretty much everything your business needed? Interim OS upgrades had easily identifiable payoffs that made migrating worthwhile.

Can we say the same for Vista? According to our readers, not really. As a whole, they say there are no business drivers behind the move to Vista. But sooner or later, we'll be running it anyway. The only question is, when?

The Perfect Storm: Our Wounded Soldiers and the Flood of Public Outrage

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 08:03:15 -0700

We have now learned that the outpatient conditions faced by some of our wounded returning soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center are truly shocking—rodent and roach infested rooms, mold and leaky plumbing, no heat and water, inadequate and unqualified staffing, and seemingly interminable bureaucratic delays in their treatment. But equally stunning is the fact that several high-level officials have actually lost their jobs as a result of this news—despite initial efforts to downplay and discount the reported negligence. After all, considering the Bush administration’s lengthy record of action and inaction worthy of public outrage and condemnation, we might wonder why this particular instance of wrongdoing and mismanagement has drawn such a strong, unified, and seemingly effective response from the American people. From a psychological perspective, one reason is clear: the discoveries at Walter Reed represent a near “perfect storm,” triggering all five core concerns—about vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness—that often govern the way we understand the world around us.

Vulnerability. There are few things more important to us than the safety and well-being of those we care about. Accounts of soldiers’ serious and life-threatening injuries are therefore terribly distressing even when we picture them receiving state-of-the-art medical care. To learn instead that they still remain in jeopardy after returning home—due to the bureaucratic neglect and appalling living conditions at Walter Reed—disturbs us even more deeply.

Injustice. When we witness wrongdoing, we are often quick to anger and eager to see justice restored. It is therefore unsurprising that we find ourselves collectively outraged by the inadequate outpatient care given to wounded soldiers who have sacrificed in service to our country. Efforts to downplay or cover up the tragic circumstances at Walter Reed only add to our sense of profound injustice.

Distrust. We make many important decisions based upon who we think can be trusted and who we think cannot; significant betrayals of trust therefore shatter key foundations in our lives. Our troops embrace a simple pact: they will stand in harm’s way and, should they fall, they will not be abandoned during their time of greatest need. Substandard conditions at Walter Reed demonstrate the military administration’s failure to honor this pledge—not only to our wounded soldiers, but to the American people as well.

Superiority. Individually and collectively, we take pride in what makes us feel special and we strive to defend these badges of honor from assault. In this context, American soldiers are larger-than-life heroes who represent the character and courage we believe exemplifies the United States as a whole. That the wounded would be treated so poorly at Walter Reed—through no fault or shortcomings of their own—therefore undermines our deeply cherished view of our country’s greatness.

Helplessness. Finally, we strongly resist the idea that we have no control over what happens to us; helplessness is a plight we desperately wish to avoid. Images of soldiers’ life-changing and life-threatening battlefield injuries bring these concerns to the forefront. What happens when we are unable to care for ourselves? At the very least, we hope that others will take up our cause and work to ensure our well-being. The pervasive failures in the treatment of outpatients at Walter Reed are jarring reminders that such confidence can be sadly misplaced.

The triggering of our collective core concerns in response to reports about Walter Reed Army Medical Center unleashed a powerful force for change: broad public outrage. As a result, today we can reasonably anticipate concerted efforts to correct this deplorable situation. This is very good news. But there is also a much larger lesson not to be overlooked here. There are many other pressing issues—inadequate access to healthcare, growing economic insecurity, and civil rights infringements to name just a few—where we can and should apply the psychological lenses of vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. In doing so, we may again find significant untapped public support for a progressive agenda.

As an addendum, it bears emphasizing that appeals to our core concerns can also be used destructively. I examine this dark side of the coin in an online video entitled Dangerous Ideas: How Conservatives Exploit Our Five Core Concerns. It can be viewed HERE.

Olmert Reveals the Real Goal of War in Lebanon

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 13:47:10 -0700

by Jonathan Cook
March 14, 2007

Israel's supposedly "defensive" assault on Hezbollah last summer, in which more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed in a massive aerial bombardment that ended with Israel littering the country's south with cluster bombs, was cast in a definitively different light last week by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

His leaked testimony to the Winograd Committee – investigating the government's failures during the month-long attack – suggests that he had been preparing for such a war at least four months before the official casus belli: the capture by Hezbollah of two Israeli soldiers from a border post on July 12, 2006. Lebanon's devastation was apparently designed to teach both Hezbollah and the country's wider public a lesson.

[...]

There was an alternative route that Olmert and his commanders could have followed: they could have sought to lessen the threat of attacks on the northern border by damping down the main inciting causes of Israel's conflict with Hezbollah

According to Olmert's testimony, he was seeking just such a solution to the main problem: a small corridor of land known as the Shebaa Farms claimed by Lebanon but occupied by Israel since 1967. As a result of the Farms area's occupation, Hezbollah has argued that Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 was incomplete and that the territory still needed liberating.

Olmert's claim, however, does not stand up to scrutiny.

The Israeli media revealed in January that for much of the past two years Syria's leader, Bashar al-Assad, has been all but prostrating himself before Israel in back-channel negotiations over the return of Syrian territory, the Golan, currently occupied by Israel. Although those talks offered Israel the most favorable terms it could have hoped for (including declaring the Golan a peace park open to Israelis), Sharon and then Olmert – backed by the U.S. – refused to engage Damascus.

A deal on the Golan with Syria would almost certainly have ensured that Shebaa Farms was returned to Lebanon. Had Israel or the U.S. wanted it, they could have made considerable progress on this front.

The other major tension was Israel's repeated transgressions of the northern border, complemented by Hezbollah's own, though less frequent, violations. After the army's withdrawal in 2000, United Nations monitors recorded Israeli warplanes violating Lebanese airspace almost daily. Regular overflights were made to Beirut, where pilots used sonic booms to terrify the local population, and drones spied on much of the country. Again, had Israel halted these violations of Lebanese sovereignty, Hezbollah's own breach of Israeli sovereignty in attacking the border post would have been hard to justify.

And finally, when Hezbollah did capture the soldiers, there was a chance for Israel to negotiate over their return. Hezbollah made clear from the outset that it wanted to exchange the soldiers for a handful of Lebanese prisoners still in Israeli jails. But, of course, as Olmert's testimony implies, Israel was not interested in talks or in halting its bombing campaign. That was not part of the plan.

We can now start to piece together why....

The Seymour Hersh Mystery

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:44:50 -0700

A Journalist Writing Bloody Murder…
And No One Notices

By Tom Engelhardt

Let me see if I've got this straight. Perhaps two years ago, an "informal" meeting of "veterans" of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal -- holding positions in the Bush administration -- was convened by Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams. Discussed were the "lessons learned" from that labyrinthine, secret, and illegal arms-for-money-for-arms deal involving the Israelis, the Iranians, the Saudis, and the Contras of Nicaragua, among others -- and meant to evade the Boland Amendment, a congressionally passed attempt to outlaw Reagan administration assistance to the anti-communist Contras. In terms of getting around Congress, the Iran-Contra vets concluded, the complex operation had been a success -- and would have worked far better if the CIA and the military had been kept out of the loop and the whole thing had been run out of the Vice President's office.

Subsequently, some of those conspirators, once again with the financial support and help of the Saudis (and probably the Israelis and the Brits), began running a similar operation, aimed at avoiding congressional scrutiny or public accountability of any sort, out of Vice President Cheney's office. They dipped into "black pools of money," possibly stolen from the billions of Iraqi oil dollars that have never been accounted for since the American occupation began. Some of these funds, as well as Saudi ones, were evidently funneled through the embattled, Sunni-dominated Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to the sort of Sunni jihadi groups ("some sympathetic to al-Qaeda") whose members might normally fear ending up in Guantanamo and to a group, or groups, associated with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.

[...]

Imagine, in addition, that Hersh went on Democracy Now!, Fresh Air, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer and actually elaborated on these claims and revelations, some of which, on the face of it, seem like potentially illegal and impeachable offenses, if they do indeed reach up to the Vice President or President.

Now imagine the response: Front-page headlines; editorials nationwide calling for answers, Congressional hearings, or even the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into some of the claims; a raft of op-ed page pieces by the nation's leading columnists asking questions, demanding answers, reminding us of the history of Iran-Contra; bold reporters from a recently freed media standing up in White House and Defense Department press briefings to demand more information on Hersh's various charges; calls in Congress for hearings and investigations into why the people's representatives were left so totally out of this loop.

Uh…

Fueling the Ethanol Trade: U.S.-Brazil ethanol production pact could set back new technologies

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:39:09 -0700

Jennifer Kho | Red Herring | March 13

Brazil is the king of ethanol, which accounts for 40 percent of the country’s transportation fuel—by far the highest percentage worldwide. The South American country last year said it expected to be energy independent, largely because of the sugarcane-based fuel, by this year.

Now the United States might be getting some of that sweet ethanol after striking a deal with Brazil to boost research and production of ethanol and other biofuels, and to establish common commercialization standards. Some clean energy advocates applauded the deal, but others worried the agreement will make domestic ethanol—and some new technologies—less competitive.

“Transferring the United States’ addiction on foreign oil to foreign biofuels doesn’t make sense,” said Tom Buis, president of the U.S. National Farmers Union, in a statement. “This agreement is the wrong step in the wrong direction at the wrong time.”

Is the US . . .

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:32:08 -0700

. . . planning to oust Mushy in Pakistan?

As a layman, I would like to sit back and read some informed debate on Edward Lazear's opinions.

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:20:18 -0700

....bonddad? Sean-Paul? Ian? Mauberly? Numerian? Anyone? Bueller?

A Vision of Steady Growth

James Pethokoukis | March 19 issue

U.S News & World Report Concerns about income inequality and slow wage growth have blemished what perhaps has been President Bush's greatest success: presiding over an economic boom that's in its sixth year and has created more than 6 million new jobs during the past three years. It is Edward Lazear's job, as chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, to help keep the good times going and to make sure more Americans participate in them. Luckily, that's kind of his specialty. Before joining the Bush team, he was a labor economist at Stanford University and specialized in how pay structures motivate workers.

The question then becomes what's the best way to finance [the deficit] over time. The market basically tells you if we are not paying [the debt] off quickly enough. The way you know that is to just look at interest rates. ... Interest rates have just not gone up. If interest rates are low, what that tells us is that government borrowing is not out of hand."

The reason for the trade deficit is primarily, to my mind, the capital accounts surplus. People want to invest in the United States. In order to invest in the United States, they have to give us something. ... And so what they are giving us is their goods in return. So I basically think of the trade deficit as funding their desire to invest in our capital, which is why I think of that as a good thing."

It's not that wages at the bottom have been declining so much or even at the middle have been declining; it's really that they've been relatively flat but that wages at the top have been growing. That's a good thing. It's a good thing when wages at the top grow because what that means is that investments in skills are paying off at higher rates than they paid off in the past."

Zbigniew Brzezinski Was . . .

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:07:26 -0700

. . . on the Diane Rehm Show today. This is essential radio that you will not want to miss. It's an excellent walk through the last 15 years of diplomatic/geopolitical history. I'm trying to get him on the show this week, but don't hold your breath.

So, This US Attorneys Scandal

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 11:40:23 -0700

. . . has now taken on a life of its own, I see. It started in the blogs, as they say, but it took the participation of the media establishment and mainstream politicians to keep it real. And now, the Democrats seem to have closed the third side of Daou's triangle. Nice to see it work so effortlessly. Wish we could do this more often.

If You Weren't Aware . . .

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 19:42:29 -0700

. . . it is Spring Break and Tatiana is out of school. So, my postings around here will be erratic this week. Just an FYI. There is always lots of news in the NewsWire and in the Diaries. Check them both out.

The People Who . . .

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:11:17 -0700

. . . run Fox News have to be either a.) seriously incompetent or are b.) malignant, malicious and nothing more than a propaganda outlet for the GOP.

I'm going with choice B. You?

'Smart' rebels outstrip US

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 09:51:09 -0700

'Smart' rebels outstrip US

Top American generals make shock admission as Iraq leader pleads with neighbouring countries to seal off their borders

Paul Beaver in Fort Lauderdale and Peter Beaumont
Sunday March 11, 2007
The Observer

The US army is lagging behind Iraq's insurgents tactically in a war that senior officers say is the biggest challenge since Korea 50 years ago.

The gloomy assessment at a conference in America last week came as senior US and Iraqi officials sat down yesterday with officials from Iran, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in Baghdad to persuade Iraq's neighbours to help seal its borders against fighters, arms and money flowing in. During the conference the US, Iranian and Syrian delegations were reported to have had a 'lively exchange'

Nigeria: Energy Infrastructure Firestorm

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 13:08:52 -0800

From The Oil Drum

Figure 1: Nigerian Militants in a Speedboat

When a fire becomes sufficiently intense, its heat creates a rising column of air so strong that surrounding air is drawn into the void, creating a draft that sustains and intensifies the fire. It becomes a self-sustaining, self-intensifying organism: a firestorm. The violence in Nigeria’s delta region has become a firestorm, and the consequences of this transformation will fundamentally impact that nation’s ability to export oil. Recent events in the delta region have transitioned the violence there from a negative-feedback loop where there was a disincentive to militants to shut in too high a portion of Nigeria’s oil exports to a positive-feedback loop where militants will compete to completely destroy Nigeria’s capacity to export oil....

Global Warming: Who Loses—and Who Wins?

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 10:36:59 -0800

In this month's dead-tree edition of The Atlantic Monthly, Greg Easterbrook has an article, "Global Warming: Who Loses—and Who Wins?" Not (yet, at least) available to non-subscribers online, the article looks at the cloud ("Climate change in the next century (and beyond) could be enormously disruptive, spreading disease and sparking wars.") of global warming and sees the silver lining ("It could also be a windfall for some people, businesses, and nations. A guide to how we all might get along in a warming world.")

Among the beneficiaries:

Buffalo - as summer vacation paradise of the stars
Washington DC, as city of eternal spring
North Pole Seas - rush to establish oil-drilling rights
Sub-Saharan Africa - as contrarian land-buying opportunity
Afghanistan - as greener pasture for overheated Pakistanis

Here are some select quotes:

"Real estate might be expected to appreciate steadily in value during the 21st century, given that both the global population and global prosperity are rising"

"While staying ready to sell your holdings in Europe, look for purchase opportunities near the waters of the Arctic Circle"

"Today nearly all primary commodities, including petroleum, appear in ample supply. Freshwater is an exception... ...where water rights are available in these areas [China, Dubai], grab them."

"Water-related investments might be attractive in another way: for hydro-power... Quebec is the Saudi Arabia of roaring water... Similarly, there is hydropower potential in the Chilean portions of Patagonia. This is a wild and beautiful region little touched by human activity - and an intriguing place to snap up land for hydropower reserves."

"Why, ultimately, should nations act to control greenhouse gases, rather than just letting climate turmoil happen and see who profits? One reason is the cost of control is likely to be much lower than the cost of rebuilding the world.... For the United States, there's another argument that's particularly keen. The present ordering of the world favors the United States in nearly every respect... ...when the global order already places America at No. 1, why would we want to run the risk of climate change that alters that order?"

This useful article also has a number of suggestions in the inset, "A 401(k) for a warming world.", but I'll leave them for The Atlantic's subscribers...