"...The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. ...Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that..." - from Where Do We Go From Here speech (1967)
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice" - a saying attributed to Reverend King, based on sayings from a speech by Unitarian minister Theodore Parker. King says it in one line where Parker took a whole paragraph, and King says it better. (this is kinda like how Jimi Hendrix's take on "All Along the Watchtower" is waaaaay better than Bob Dylan's original)
We have come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands it does not eliminate all poverty...
The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available...
MLK essentially argued for guaranteed basic incomes before it came into vogue a few years ago.
Also, this:
I know this kinda goes against Rev. King's admonitions against violence,
but never let a white guy in a bowtie speak for what King stood for.
Also, I really think if Reverend King were alive today (ducks to avoid Huey's thrown chair) he'd be under arrest for beating the everloving hell out of trump.
Mentioned back in April that Iran agreed to a deal to reduce their efforts and step away from a nuclear weapons program. Today, the final steps of that deal were put in place between Iran, the United States, and other major global players. To the Atlantic on the deal:
One key feature of the deal is that it exchanges sanctions relief for Iran with limits to its fuel stockpile and nuclear-production capacities. Iran will have to remove two-thirds of its installed centrifuges and store them under international supervision. It will also have to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium by 98 percent for 15 years.
Should Iran fail to hold up its end of the bargain, the agreement arranges for a panel involving all seven countries that participated in the nuclear talks to vote on whether to put sanctions on Iran back in place. A simple majority can approve them, which means that if Iran, China, and Russia vote against the so-called “snapback” of sanctions, they can be overruled.
Meanwhile, the agreement affirms that "under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons." To make sure Iran complies, it also guarantees that the International Atomic Energy Agency will monitor Iran’s nuclear facilities for the next 25 years...
...As for the United Nations arms embargo against Iran, it will be lifted after five years and restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missiles will be eased after eight years. According to Colum Lynch and Dan de Luce at Foreign Policy, the American concession on this issue, which may alienate some of the president’s allies in Congress, is ultimately what led to Iran to give in on the limits to its nuclear program outlined in the accord. The issue of the arms embargo was initially left out of the April framework agreement.
Beinart's article about why the Republicans are having, will have a major hissy fit over this:
When critics focus incessantly on the gap between the present deal and a perfect one, what they’re really doing is blaming Obama for the fact that the United States is not omnipotent. This isn’t surprising given that American omnipotence is the guiding assumption behind contemporary Republican foreign policy. Ask any GOP presidential candidate except Rand Paul what they propose doing about any global hotspot and their answer is the same: be tougher. America must take a harder line against Iran’s nuclear program, against ISIS, against Bashar al-Assad, against Russian intervention in Ukraine and against Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea...
...Obama has certainly made mistakes in the Middle East. But behind his drive for an Iranian nuclear deal is the effort to make American foreign policy “solvent” again by bringing America’s ends into alignment with its means. That means recognizing that the United States cannot bludgeon Iran into total submission, either economically or militarily. The U.S. tried that in Iraq.
It is precisely this recognition that makes the Iran deal so infuriating to Obama’s critics. It codifies the limits of American power. And recognizing the limits of American power also means recognizing the limits of American exceptionalism. It means recognizing that no matter how deeply Americans believe in their country’s unique virtue, the United States is subject to the same restraints that have governed great powers in the past. For the Republican right, that’s a deeply unwelcome realization. For many other Americans, it’s a relief. It’s a sign that, finally, the Bush era in American foreign policy is over.
What is happening here is this: Obama's efforts at diplomacy throughout his two terms demonstrates that the neocon hardline "war is the answer" mindset is false. Where the Republicans would insist on bombs and occupation at all times, Obama looks for alternatives, usually through talks and deals. Granted, Obama still deploys troops and has increasingly relied on drone warfare across the Middle East, but he's trying to avoid the large-scale alienation that hampered U.S. interests overseas and weakened our position with allied nations.
Look at how Jeb Bush - whose father of all people was an expert diplomat himself, and who has to be cringing at his son's folly - was complaining about Obama's "poor" efforts at foreign policy, that "we" as a nation were "not leading". His criticisms ring hollow and false now that Obama and his State Department led our allies into making a solid workable deal with an Iran once treated as hostile by Jeb's brother Dubya. Jeb seems to ignore a key bit about foreign policy: if you go into a meeting and come out of it with more allies and trade partners than you did going in, it's a victory. And more often than not, Obama's been winning those meetings.
To the hard-liners here in the U.S., the talk will likely be about how this deal hurts Israel (and Saudi Arabia), or appeases the theocratic Ayatollahs ruling Iran. What they're ignoring is that if (yes, we do need that caveat) the deal pans out, Israel (and Saudi Arabia) will actually be SAFER with a nuke-free Iran in the region. And this isn't a soft deal either: if Iran gets caught pulling anything sneaky - and the oversight/transparency efforts appear to be well-prepped - the whole deal's off, which is a strong incentive for Iran - which needs the sanctions lifted for economic stability - not to cheat.
And as for the Ayatollahs and their hard-liners in the Iranian government, the easing of sanctions will make the world a friendlier, more attractive visage to the Iranian people (who are more savvy about the world and eager for normalcy than the neocons would admit).
I still stand with the protesters from years ago who stood for a democratic change in their leadership. I cheer on the fact that a later election cycle proved the Iranian people wanted that change despite the fear of their overlords, and elected people who became part of this peace process with the world at large. I still hope that with this move, the hard-liners of their government can realize they don't need to rule by fear or suppress their people.
This is a great day for America, and a large step towards global peace. Well, okay, there's still the rest of the Middle East to clean up, ISIL to stomp, a Syrian civil war to end, a Libyan government to stabilize, a...
Also, it's I Heart Pluto Day. Let Pluto be the Planet it was BORN to be.
(Update: Big hello to all the Crooks & Liars readers visiting from Mike's Blog Round Up! Please comment, and do keep track of the blog 'cause this weekend I'm doing Orlando MegaCon and I plan on posting embarrassing pictures of myself dressed as a Jedi)
...But the deal announced this afternoon actually contains some specifics. According to a fact sheet released by the State Department, Iran will reduce its installed centrifuges by two thirds, to around 6,000, and won’t enrich uranium over 3.67 percent for the next 15 years. (“Weapons grade” uranium is more than 90 percent enriched.) Iran will only enrich uranium at its facility at Natanz, with its heavily fortified Fordow reactor converted to a nuclear research center. IAEA inspectors will have access to all of Iran’s nuclear facilities. And Iran will substantially reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium, though it’s not quite clear if it will be diluted or shipped abroad.
After Iran has fulfilled its commitments, the U.S. and EU will suspend their nuclear-related sanctions and all past UN Security Council resolutions on the nuclear issue, including those imposing sanctions, will be lifted, but the “architecture” of these sanctions programs will remain in place to allow them to be quickly reapplied if Iran doesn’t hold up its end of the deal. (Given congressional opposition to lifting sanctions, the Obama administration probably didn’t have the power to scrap them entirely anyway.)...
The deal, of course, is already under attack from the Far Right war-monger and fear-monger crowd of the National Review, Not Fox News, and other "Let's Bomb 'Em All And Let Allah Sort 'Em Out." neocons. The National Review is already claiming this puts us under the "Shadow of Munich" which is code for how appeasement failed to stop Hitler and Nazi Germany from starting World War II.
Munich always comes up as the bugaboo of the neocons: to them, ANY form of peace negotiations are fruitless against "aggressor states" or "irrational actors"; and to them, every evil dictator is another Hitler wanting global domination or global death.
Problem is: THIS ISN'T MUNICH. Munich happened under different circumstances and involving different persons and attitudes. In this day and age, Iran is in no position to go marching armies across the globe: there are too many other nations already alert and prepared. Iran's leadership may be authoritarian (not totalitarian: there's a distinction) but they're not irrational or crazy like the Nazis. The Iranians do show signs of making "cost-benefits" analyses of actions both overt and covert, much like the other nations in the region we'd call rational (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel).
Of course, none of that will matter to the Far Right Not News crowd. They'll be attacking Obama as weak and foolish and a fake American destroying our Christianist Way of Bigotry uh Life like always, and it will still be any minute when someone will openly attack Obama for the way he ties his shoelaces. I mean, there's been moments when the attacks have been more foolish and insulting than that, but an actual critic of Obama's shoelaces is still a moment to wait and enjoy witnessing...
This is, as noted before, the 100-year anniversary of the first year of World War I.
History is made of competing forces. Between the Great Man and the Social Movements lie all the conflicts of both. By 1914, these forces had congealed on the European continent through a combination of set nations - France, Germany, Russia, the UK, Italy, Austria-Hungarian Empire, and Ottoman Empire - and a burgeoning psycho-social ideology of Nationalism fighting over pride and global power.
It had been 100 years in the making by then. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic empire and swath of republicanism, Europe suffered through a period of nation-building border wars - the Greek independence war, Italian reunification, Prussian unification of a greater Germany - that concluded with the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71.
What had been viewed at the time as a likely win for France - larger armies, better organized - turned into a full rout in Prussia's favor in a war that barely lasted a year. France was abjectly humiliated as a result (this is where the meme of France being terrible in wars started), Germany rose up to disrupt the standard balance of power - once it was England vs. France, no longer - in Western Europe, and the Victorian Era switched from being a period of scientific advancements to one big mechanized military arms race.
The problem was that the Victorian (and later Edwardian) Era became this period of an idealized, improved social condition. Things like personal honor, stiff upper lip, gentlemanly codes became more fetishized. A lot of it had to do with the literature of the time. Some of it with the changes in economic and social fortunes creating a middle class striving for cultural norms of its own, to where the upper classes indulged in sharing the more romantic elements of their lifestyles.
By the time the fighting in World War I actually started, nearly everyone went into it with these grand notions of honor and soldiering. That it was all parade marches and sacrificial charges into waiting hordes of bayonets and swords. Nobody really thought about the improved rifles and automatic guns, or the advancements in artillery fire and targeting, or the armored tanks that were new to the battlefield, or the effectiveness of barbed wire and hand grenades and poison gasses.
By the end of the calendar year of 1914, Western Europe's battlefields were basically two extended mud trenches and two massive armies - Germany in one trench, UK and France in the other - staring at each other across a cold no-mans-land. The Germans were the ones who made the efforts to decorate their trenches for the holidays, and via the honored soldiers' code of "Live and Let Live" (under which both sides agree to temporary cease-fires to recover wounded or personal belongings), the Germans sent messages to their British and French counterparts about holding a truce - THE Truce - during Christmas Day.
There aren't a lot of documents about it, mostly from a good number of diary entries and remembrances of those who were there that day, so a lot of the Christmas Truce has fallen into legend. Above all the legend of a football (soccer to us Yanks) game being played between the two armies. There's no evidence it happened, but the story is that Germany won 3-2. It'd have been tied but that damn ref called Blackadder offsides.
Whatever history there is of this - the legends still tell us - the generals were not amused their soldiers weren't killing each other. When the areas where the Truce were continuing on after Christmas had passed, the chain of command ordered artillery barrages and switched out the divisions stationed there with fresh troops to ensure the fighting started up again. By 1915, the generals planned ahead and made sure they had artillery barrages scheduled for Christmas to prevent the troops from making another try at a truce. By 1916, they didn't bother: the bloodshed between both sides - and the use of chemical gas weapons - ensured the troops were in no mood for cease-fires.
Looking back on the Christmas Truce, it reminds us that the war was fought by men looking not for glory - that madness was left to the generals - but because it was expected of them. Where the soldiers in the trenches had more in common with each other than the officers in their headquarters five miles back. The Truce was part of an era of that Victorian/Edwardian mindset of honor between soldiers regardless of which flag they fought for.
It was an era that was dead in the trenches by 1918.
And yet, we remember. We remember the Truce as a good thing, a moment in human history at the edge of a terrible war where there was still hope and the potential of friendship past the hardship. As a nice little Christmas candle shining in the darkness of the 20th Century.
Merry Christmas to ye, fallen soldiers of that and all other wars, before and after. The Truce remains to us as a memory of what we all can achieve some day.
A chance of playing an honest game of football and not get shot at for it.
Yet just right now, the Senate Foreign Relations committee overseeing such issues just voted 10-7 in favor of a "limited military response" to Syria's use of chemical weapons. There's still a full Senate vote I believe and also a House resolution, but most of the experts believe that both parties may go along with approval (Dems because they have the need to back their party's nominal leader, Republicans because there's a sizable faction of neocon interventionists seeking to "tame" the Middle East through superior firepower).
Usually elected officials are more aware, more alert to the reality that voting whole-heartedly against their constituents' opinions tends to be a bad idea. They're at least aware of the risks: even during the health care reform debates a good number of Democrats openly worried they would lose seats over passing any reform despite the fact that everybody knew health care costs needed to be controlled somehow.
Yet with the Syrian military strike as an issue, there's this kind of intellectual if not emotional disconnect to what's happening. None of the politicians seem to be pointing to the poll numbers or worrying about how this plays "back home" with their voters. If there are any, I'm not seeing them speak up on the news channels or websites. (If there's at least one, please pass along the link)
I cannot remember a war in which the public in the most affected countries is so opposed. And that opposition is not likely to melt in a week or so – certainly not if many people listened to John Kerry yesterday. And that poll is about the abstraction of “strikes” – and not about the open-ended war to depose Assad that the administration actually proposed in its own resolution. Mercifully, Americans are not as dumb as many think...
There's been times that the DC "establishment" were not in tune with the nation as a whole: the obsessive hate-on for Clinton (not just the GOP but the media elites and power-brokers operating in DC) that made many voters side with him when the Lewinsky scandal broke is a recent example. But this time it's troubling. This time, lives - ours and Syrians - are at stake. The chaos of the Middle East may well get worse if military action takes place. And there's no guarantee that the planned missile strikes will do anything productive.
In a situation where diplomacy makes the most sense - the possibility of getting with Russia and Iran, Syria's primary backers, both of whomare troubled by the gas attacks as well - it's terrifying that nobody in DC wants to argue for this as a sensible alternative.
This isn't Munich. Like Conor points out - "For Hawks, it is always 1938" - there's no Chamberlain-esque appeasement here other than trying to find something that would stop the damn bloodshed:
Every part of that part of that argument is wrong. The war weariness of post-WWI Britain was very different from the war weariness of present day America, and an unwillingness to strike dictators who kill their own people is not the same as appeasement.By Hirsh's logic, it is imperative that we immediately invade North Korea because otherwise we are appeasing it, and inviting it to begin a blitzkrieg across the Western world, because Hitler. The approach he implies -- intervention wherever there is a dictator or a mass murder -- is a recipe for far more war, and far more misery from war.
One of our nation's biggest problems hasn't been the partisan brinkmanship, the incessant noise machine drowning out policy solutions, the sheer amount of money in the electioneering business (seriously, it's in the billions now), it's been the Lack Of Accountability. We're having one of those Lack Of Accountability moments. And everyone's failing the moment.
I've got this thing about complaining how the Far Right has this "Obama Problem" via my Shoelace Hypothesis, because they'll complain about EVERY little thing he does up to and including how he'll tie his shoelaces. Follow the labels for shoelace hypothesis to follow the trend...
But I wake up this morning to pretty unusual headlines. This morning it seems we're getting the perfect example of how the Far LEFT obsesses over Obama with overt praise, sometimes excluding all reason and evidence that Obama hasn't really done as much as he ought to (JOBS, OBAMA WE NEED JOBS, ahem)...
The Norway-based Nobel Prize Committee has awarded this year's Peace Prize (sorta the "They Like Me! They REALLY LIKE ME!" Award for global leaders) to Barack Obama.
That noise you just heard was the entire Right Wingnut faction from Limbaugh to Malkin and the entire FOX News Zombie Force screaming "SOCIALIST!" But I digress. This isn't about them. This is about Obama.
Even though he's only been on the job nine months. Even though he's STILL overseeing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and might even increase troops there!). Even though he's a bit... reluctant to pursue war crimes investigations into the torture-lovers from the previous administration (pretty much everyone from Cheney on down the roll call). Even though a lot of the things he's really done on the global stage - dropping the missile shield projects for Europe, talking to Iran to comply with international nuclear treaties and oversight, following through on pre-set troop stand-downs in Iraq - are pretty much proposed actions rather than actual accomplishments.
To wit: he hasn't really DONE anything. The only thing he's really really done is... show respect to other nations. That's officially it.
Unofficially, there's an even better explanation, and a good numberof observers (even Greenwald) have picked up on it right away: Obama won the Peace Prize because HE'S NOT GEORGE W. BUSH.
Let me remind you seven readers: I'm not a huge fan of Dubya to begin with. And I'm not defending him either. I can understand PERFECTLY why the Nobel committee would want to snub and insult Bush the Lesser any and every way they can.
Bush is pretty much the ur-example of how NOT to work towards winning a Peace Prize:
A questionable invasion of Iraq and years-long occupation of that country;
Mismanagement of a global intervention and rebuilding effort in Afghanistan in response to 9/11 and Taliban human rights abuses to where Afghanistan is an even worse place to live than before;
Pushing an inane missile defense system that did little but put money into defense contractors' pockets and also cheese off the Russians;
Hampering international efforts across the board on things such as climate change issues;
A massive criminal enterprise of torture, illegal detentions, more torture, and deaths of innocents;
Basic personal cluelessness regarding personal protocol. You do NOT give any woman an unsolicited backrub.
Basically, Dubya's Reign of Error presided over America's slipping in international prestige from Number One to Number... well, somewhere below Brazil. This was, in some respects, why Obama won the election in 2008, why Obama's overseas trips get crowds the size of a U2 or Springsteen stadium performance: Obama is not Bush.
Obama is NOT Bush in terms of demeanor, and especially in terms of sincerity. When Obama talks of wanting peace, wanting other nations to join in efforts to end war and threats of terrorism, he says it like he means it. Unlike Bush the Lesser, who seemed to be going through the motions, making the gestures, acting solemn but not actually achieving the resolute stature you need to pull it off, and also pushing the issue with phrases like "You're with us or against us."
That's pretty much the only reason Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. To piss off the Far Right still worshipping the Worst President Ever.
I can vaguely recall when the Far Right wingnuts promoted certain individuals as "nominees" for the Peace Prize when the people doing the nominating weren't on the Nobel Committee, making the distinction worthless. It was during the build-up to the Iraq invasion, to have these war proponents argue for bloodshed under cover of "peaceful" intent. BS. I'm pretty sure after Al Gore got the Peace Prize in 2007 for also Not Being George W. Bush that the wingnuts stopped pushing the Nobels as a worthy resume add-on. This is going to go over well at the Weekly Standard.
And I'm pretty sure Obama would want to trade the award in to get the 2016 Olympics back. I mean, Japan or Cuba vs. USA in Wrigley Field??? AWESOME.
For all the recognition of George W. Bush's unpopularity, it's easy to overlook the ways in which the international community was truly mortified by the U.S. leadership during the Bush era. The irreplaceable leading nation could no longer be trusted to do the right thing -- on use of force, torture, rule of law, international cooperation, democratic norms, even climate change. We'd reached a point at which much of the world was poised to simply give up on America's role as a global leader.
And, love him or hate him, President Obama changed this. I doubt anyone on the Nobel committee would admit it, but the Peace Prize is, to a certain extent, an implicit "thank you" to the United States for reclaiming its rightful place on the global stage.
It's indicative of a degree of relief. Much of the world has wanted America to take the lead again, and they're rightly encouraged to see the U.S. president stepping up in the ways they hoped he would. It's hard to overstate the significance, for example, of seeing a U.S. president chair a meeting of the United Nations Security Council and making strides on a nuclear deal.
This is not to say Obama was honored simply because he's not Bush. The president really has committed himself to promoting counter-proliferation, reversing policies on torture, embracing a new approach to international engagement, and recommitting the U.S. to the Middle East peace process. But charting a new course for American leadership, breaking with the recent past, no doubt played a role.
As outraged as American conservatives are this morning, notice the international reactions. Praise was not universal, but Mohamed Elbaradei, for example, said, "I cannot think of anyone today more deserving of this honor. In less than a year in office, he has transformed the way we look at ourselves and the world we live in and rekindled hope for a world at peace with itself." Mandela, Tutu, and Gorbachev, among others, also praised the announcement. The most angry international responses came from Hamas and the Taliban.
