The Next Hurrah

Out of Sequence -- Pakistan and Nuclear Jihadists

by Sara

Again, needs to help a friend took me away from the book-stack and the computer for over a week -- sorry about that.  But while away, I did grab an unread book off the stack, and sadly it was all too much to the point while trying to follow the Bhutto Murder on someone else's TV.  Nonetheless I want to highlight it, since it is currently available at your local Bookstore. 

"The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man who Sold the World's Most Dangerous Secrets...and How we could Have Stopped Him." by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins; Twelve, (Hachette) 2007. attracted my attention because of the author -- and ultimately the subject.  Frantz was co-author back in 1992 of an excellent piece of investigative journalism, "A Full Service Bank" -- a very significant work about BCCI, and its crash in the late 1980's, that depended in no small way on the cooperation of John Kerry and his Senate Investigative Staff.  In fact it was in 2004 that I pulled the book off the shelves for a careful re-reading fully expecting Kerry to totally unload on George Bush during the campaign, all of the involvement of the Bush Family in the BCCI.  Sadly, I was most disappointed.   I still think one of the hidden secrets of that 2004 campaign involves why Kerry did not use what he clearly knows, and what he had much earlier made available to Frantz.  Be that as it will -- perhaps some day Kerry will spill the beans -- but while wandering through new books at B&N, Frantz's name on a new book about the A.Q. Khan Nuclear Supermarket attracted attention, and sure enough, Frantz does more or less take up the topic where he left off fifteen years ago.  You see, one of the clear objectives of BCCI's international finance super fraud was the provision to Pakistan (privately and through public finance) of the means to create the necessary Nuclear Industry as the foundation for their weapons program.  Thus in "The Nuclear Jihadist" Frantz picks up the story where he left off in the early 1990's, makes a few minor corrections, and advances the story right up to recent months.  Frantz reported the earlier BCCI story for the NYTimes, won a Pulitzer for his investigative reporting, went on to be Managing Editor of the LA Times, left over the decision to downplay investigative work, and now is mostly free lance.  I would suggest that any Plameologist hereabouts would very much enjoy this book as well as the earlier one.  In fact, I detect a good deal of framing of Valerie's CIA career in this book, though of course she is only mentioned in otherwise public information about her outing and the Libby Trial.  Frantz, in fact, is very critical of the CIA approach to Nuclear Non-proliferation.  He observes that at each juncture over more than twenty years, the CIA had both the clear evidence, and the means for stopping the Pakistani Project, but in each instance decided against that track and in favor of more passive watching and waiting in hopes of finding yet more tentacles of Khan's Nuclear Marketplace.  One cannot help but reach the conclusion that once the compromises were made during the Reagan years to downplay any aspect of non-proliferation policy in favor of short term political interests, (such as maintaining Pakistani support for the war in Afghanistan during the 1980's), virtually any Bush or Reagan official can be tagged with responsibility for the Khan Network's success in not only building the Pakistani Bomb, but spreading the industrial knowledge necessary to wide-spread proliferation -- and we should entertain the possibility that the Plame outing was not just vengence for Joe Wilson's speaking up about Yellow Cake from Niger being of interest to Iraqis, but could well have been about the destruction of the Network the CIA had carefully built for the passive watching and waiting operations.  Mounting the wars you want is much easier if you lack strong intelligence.  At any rate, those who followed Plame as far as it went will find this piece of investigative work fascinating -- a huge addition to existing knowledge, and a decent basis for careful guesses as to what else might be involved here.  Just one nugget -- apparently AQ Khan invested many of his millions in luxury hotels in Mali -- in Timbukto in fact.  This is right next to Niger.  To furnish his Hotel he arranged many freight C-130 flights from Pakistan to Mali, supposedly taking furniture and building supplies.  One wonders whether he might have also taken some "industrial" supplies along too?  A Luxury Hotel in Mali is just a little strange.  It would be so much easier to ship processed Uranium Ore than unprocessed Yellow Cake.  I doubt if that hotel fact is in Frantz's book for pure entertainment.   At any rate I was thinking about Khan's hotel in Timbukto when the shooting of Bhutto at a political rally first broke on the Radio -- and I must admit that much of what Frantz has to say about Bhutto and her apparent intentional lack of awareness of what Khan was really up to during her Prime Ministership, made for a somewhat different coloring of the increasingly awful news.  In fact while I watched a good part of the CNN and MSNBC coverage, and listened to the NPR and BBC coverage, I didn't note any reporter taking up the role of Bhutto in making possible the Khan network, or discussing Nuclear Proliferation with regard to her career.  (It was, afterall, her Father who set the Khan Network in motion.)  Fate would have it that I was reading precisely that book at the point when asking that question about Bhutto became appropriate.  (Indeed, asking it about any Pakistani leader since 1975, and in parallel, American and European leaders since then, is appropriate.  Apparently the reason the Dutch Security did nothing about Khan even after discovery of his breaches of security had to do with Dutch competition with a German firm in the European consortium to process Uranium -- it was all about Guilder and Marks in those days.)  (and it was about running the money through BCCI in those days too -- which is why Frantz's earlier work is so important.  Last week I was pissed I was not home and able to dig out that book and do Index work.)

Frantz open's his book with a scene ready for Hollywood, in which a blond Female CIA agent makes a date at a Starbucks Coffee Shop in Vienna Austria with the top IAEA investigator, (a blond man from Finland) and hands off to IAEA much of the structure of the Khan network.  Frantz clearly respects the work of IAEA, but as with most others associated with that UN agency, recognizes that it is profoundly hamstrung by its own charter -- it cannot create its own intelligence gathering operation, it must subsist on what is handed over by national intelligence authorities, and that is pretty thin gruel as you follow the story.  What's critical is that in 2004 (May to be specific) CIA handed over many of the family gems to IAEA, by sending a blond female officer to a Vienna Starbucks to do the deed.  (Probably not VPW -- they must have a number who fit the description.  VPW was outed, remember, in July, 2003.)  This was nine months later.  In the meantime Libya had turned over what they claimed was all they had received from the Khan network.  It was detail, not the guts of what CIA knew.  In fact, one detail Frantz points out is that British Intelligence wanted to make the whole saga public before the invasion of Iraq -- it was Bush and Cheney, and particularly John Bolton who did not want IAEA to have it till the US Military was in Baghdad, if then.  In fact the turn over of Khan intelligence to IAEA only took place after it was damn clear that there were no WMD in Iraq, and there was no way to fake it. 

Frantz ends his book with a description of the movement of the hands on the Nuclear Clock forward to a point equal to the worst days of the Cold War, and then he makes clear that it is probably only through true international intelligence, transparency and control that any security can be achieved.  There is so much not known about what was really included in the Khan network, that national means that put proliferation at a much lower place in the pecking order than Guilder and Marks, or Euro, Dollars and Rupees (and covering up that reality) can possibly deal with.   An IAEA with a lot more guts and power is probably a pipe dream, but as he introduced his book with the writings of John Hersey in Hiroshima, maybe we should conclude this review with a reminder of the human costs of these games.  Hersey described people trying to hold their flesh onto their faces, he described how women wearing white kimonos had the patterns of the flowers in the print inked on to their flesh -- white repelled the radiation, the flower patterns absorbed it.  Men had similar marks -- dark suspenders under light colored work clothers left similar radiation marks. 

He also quotes Albert Einstein...

"The Splitting of the Atom has changed everything,

Save our mode of thinking, and thus

We drift toward unparalled Catastrophe."

I really recommend this book -- Bhutto dead or not, died of bullets, by the hand of al-Qaeda, The Taliban, some idiot promised 77 Virgins and a load of money for his family, the handle on a sun-roof, or a well trained sniper set up for the kill in a kill box arranged by the ISI.   All this is hardly the issue. 

Hillary Clinton surprised me -- she actually had something new to say.  She suggested what could be a reasonable and fair investigation of the facts.  If I read Frantz correctly, it is that notion of impartial yet international investigative work that is the main hope...thin though it is. 

   

 

American Theocracy -- back to Kevin Phillips

by Sara

Transiting from Mearsheimer and Walt to Phillips, is something of a leap over a creek with only a few small, slick stepping stones.  The M&W focused on a lobby, created in the cast of traditional American Interest Group politics, with that huge anomaly that one part of the interest group, the Lobby, is identified by its belief that success involves the spiritual, cultural if not physical elimination of the other.  But taste if not taboo prevent us from focusing our gaze on this fault line that in most political science oriented analysis of a Lobby, would be a significant dysfunctional trait at the core of analysis.  The irony is complete once one comprehends how influential the Lobby has been in the formulation and practice of American Foreign Policy, and that those who question one or another tenet of it are the likely targets of smear and accusations of anti-Semitism.  Apparently, when the New York Sun sought to review M&W's book, they first called David Duke of the KKK, and after describing for him several themes of the book (he had never heard of the book or the authors), he apparently offered up some approving language, resulting in a review that Headlined David Duke as "recommending" the book.   Aah the practice of the Journalistic Smear!  Of course the irony is that those who predicate their world view and thus their notions of foreign policy on an End-Times narrative that would eliminate their political partners never have to answer the key question -- is that Narrative essentially anti-Semitic?  Among other things, M&W suggest breaking the taboo, and asking that question.   

Phillips approach to this question is quite different -- he is less concerned with the sociological approach (a study of the social bond that forges institutional social structures such as a Lobby), and much more concerned with cultural history, and his thesis emerges from his study of American Protestant History rooted in the largely British sects and cults that initially settled the US, and essentially continued in an American context, the conflicts that date back to the English Civil Wars of the early 1600's.  Phillips sees both the American Revolution and our own Civil War -- reconstruction, and ultimately the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's - 1970's, as a continuation of that 17th Century conflict transported from the United Kingdom to the US.  Through a process of repeated "Revival" movements, American Protestantism constantly churns, first, through sectarian emotional rejection of institutionalized religious forms for having "compromised" in building the new Jerusalem in the American Wilderness, second, by creating a less worldly and more uncompromising loose institutional structure (or new cult), and third, as that new structure makes the necessary accomodations, setting the stage for the process to repeat itself in the next or a near future generation.  Phillips contends that it is this pattern of cycles that constantly return to the theme of building the new Jerusalem in the Wilderness -- that is the foundation for the belief in American Exceptionalism, with all the baggage that carries.  Phillips comprehends Wilson, for instance, sailing off to the Versailles Conference with his 14 points as a Preacher for American Exceptionalism, a theme repeated in the current administration with GWB's neo-Wilsonian waving the flags of Freedom and Liberty and a thin gruel notion of Democracy.  Phillips sees this "process" as easily co-optable by those who do politics by putting a religious veneer on essentially political power objectives, and thus he sandwiches his religious cultural history analysis between a first and third part of his book, the first devoted to Oil, and the rather high probability of a world war for Oil Resources -- and the third devoted to the implications of the Financialization of the US, and the likely social and political decay resulting from the US debt, the collapse of the dollar, the bursting of various bubbles, (Phillips predicted the real estate bubble bursting in 2005), all of which, he further predicts, will be offered up to America in the Theocratic garments he describes in the middle core of his book. 

Phillips offers up many perhaps stray issues around which he makes a fairly weak but still plausible argument for a better than worst case outcome.  (Phillips has to be understood as publishing in early 2005 -- before Katrina, before Bush's poll numbers started going south, and before the press aroused itself, and began to critically examine many parts of the Republican Religious Establishment.)  Nonetheless, Phillips finds hope in the fairly substantial statistical disagreement between hard theologically based positions of the religious right (the litmus test issues) and academic studies and public polling around these issues, and suggests many of these may be keys to understanding the phase of the cycle or pattern at the core of Phillips thesis about the theocratic tendency in American Protestantism, leading to the kind of compromises Phillips postulates eventually lead to a weakening in evangelical revivalist movements.  And because at heart, Phillips started his publishing and consulting career as a Republican Strategist for that "new new Nixon" movement in the late 1960's, in essence his purpose is to suggest the terms of divorce more moderate Republicans might use to end their dependence on the Religious Right that has captured control of his, (Kevin Phillips's) party.  In essence his argument is that Republicans have to propose solutions to Oil dependency that work -- without having a world war for control of commidities, colored as a religious war -- and at the same time, fashion some new form of "sound dollar" economic program that addresses the profound economic inequalities Phillips addressed in "Wealth and Democracy" that he contends have been legitimized by the "Wealth doctrines" of many Republican linked evangelical movements. 

Where I suggest Mearsheimer and Walt essentially agree with Phillips is on the matter of the distorting power of the religious right -- more general in Phillips analysis, more specific in M&W's analysis of the place of the Christian Zionists in the Israel Lobby coalition.  Their frame of analysis is very different -- M&W as International Relations Realists see the distortion in the rejection of normative national interest approaches to setting American Foreign Policy and the willing incorporation of the End-Times narrative as the core of policy, whereas Phillips comprehends the distortion in the willing electorial dependence of Republicans on theologically based irrational beliefs that prevent Republicans -- and indeed many independents -- from straightforwardly addressing real problems, such as Oil Dependency or the collapse of segments of the US financial system, and the profound weakening of the dollar. 

In the case of Phillips, this leads to his essential prescription, with which I strongly agree -- and which I can reduce to a simple political slogan, namely BRING BACK THE ENLIGHTENMENT!  In the case of Mearsheimer and Walt one might phrase it as FORGET THE TABOOS, LET'S TALK. 

Summed up, and coming from very different directions, these books do converge on the core distorting character of the American Religious Right.  Our next book -- Damon Linker's insider's tale "The Theocons" will take us inside the movement.  Linker was for a number of years editor of "First Things" -- the leading Theocon Journal, and his "tell all" story adds more flesh to the necessary comprehension of the Politics - Religion relationships. 

A flash of grey flannel, a whiff of BenGay...

by Kagro X

When is an Internet-based, third party organizing effort a Very Serious Idea?

When David "Wild Man" Broder f*cking well tells you it is. That's when. You lowly moron.

Until plans for this meeting were disclosed, the most concrete public move toward any kind of independent candidacy was by Unity08, a group planning an online nominating convention to pick either an independent candidate or a ticket combining a Republican and a Democrat. The sponsors, an eclectic mix of consultants who have worked for candidates including Jimmy Carter (D) and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), have not aligned with a specific prospect.

Now, some people with high-level political and governmental credentials are moving to put muscle behind the effort.

What meeting, you ask? Why, the Big Bipartisan Serious Person's Kumbaya Love-In for America, of course.

IV, Mearsheimer and Walt, and moving on.

by Sara,

Delighted that at least one reader will pick up a copy of Mearsheimer and Walt and actually read it.  I had ordered an advance copy at my local B & N before it was released, and then during a visit found the stock person putting 20 or so copies on the shelf about a week before the announced release.  But because of advance reviews, they advanced the release date.  Signed on to Josh's place after coming home with book in bag, and there were already about a hundred folk ready to bash the book -- and they could not have possibly read it.   I recommend reading it before making a judgment. 

Next Book -- Kevin Phillips on Theocracy.  Perhaps his dedication says it all, "...dedicated to the millions of Republicans, past and present and lapsed. who have opposed the Bush Dynasty and the disenlightenment in the 2000 and the 2004 elections."

Disenlightenment;  that is a profoundly important invented word -- Thanks Kevin. 

Actually I have been a reader of Phillips since the early 1970's.  If one remembers the Emerging Republican Majority, he invented the Dayton Ohio Suburban woman who had a husband who was a tool and die maker, and had several children, and they were in the midst of discovering that there was no future for tool and die makers at National Cash Register.  Well -- that woman was my former back door neighbor, and I had added to my account for my year in Europe by babysitting her kids over several years.  Skilled labor was the first to be roughed off during the conversion to rust belt status --  so I have always understood Phillips.  (In fact my back door neighbor who became a Reagan Democrat, and not so obviously blamed race for her problems, is indeed someone I disagree with, but understand.)  But in "American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century,"   Kevin Phillips asks us to understand much more than the archtype of my backdoor neighbor of the late 1960's.  In fact you actually have to read a couple of other Phillips books to understand his points.  In fact, I doubt if "American Theocracy" comprehends without an understanding of his earlier work, "The Cousins' War."  In my mind Phillips achieved "read and seriously consider status" when I thought he aptly described my former babysitting customer in the late 50's, as he described her in the late 60's about when National Cash Register not so gradually no longer needed any tool and dye makers, because cash registers depended not on gears and springs, but on chips, and backyard neighbors became rust belt victims.  While Reagan may have appealed to these folk (and he did --they voted for him) when I finally went back to visit I found them holding down four low skilled part time jobs, but unable to manage an education for their children, and one was quite talented.  Phillips accurately predicted what Nixon's politics and policy should be (Southern Strategy and racial politics) -- but he sure as hell did not offer much to his respondants.   Which is how I read him now. 

Essentially, Phillips rips Republicans from Nixon through GWB through their hide, largely because they did not comprehend that the Oil was a commodity that was running out, and they had no idea how to replace the asset.  He argues that they thought it (and related power afterall) could be turned into a financial asset where the US would dominate, and they failed to listen to alternative views. 

In essence, Phillips suggests that into this failure, the Republicans introduced the dimension of fundamentalist and individualist salvation religion. 

And on that point, we will later take up this review of books. 

 

 

 

III Religion and Politics - The Double Irony

by Sara

Just over the past day, a new set of reviews by professional diplomatic Historians has become available on an open list to which I subscribe regariding the Mearsheimer & Walt Book, "The Israel Lobby" -- and I recommend reading these, to be found at:  http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables/#8.18   I profoundly disagree with one, and more or less agree with one or two minor points of difference, with the other three.  Anyhow, I didn't move on because I wanted to digest these serious reviews. 

Where I differ with all of these reviews is the fact that they skipped over what is actually quite unique in M & W's work -- namely their recognition that an extreme of contemporary right wing and literal fundamentalist American Christianity was very much a central player in the Israel Lobby, as M & W describe it,  and that understanding the role of this group in the network or loose coalition that is the "Israel Lobby" becomes necessary if one is to comprehend American Foreign Policy in the Middle East.  The irony (or at least a part of it) derives from what the Christian Zionists (such as the group Hagee leads) actually believe.  and that is the narrative of the Rapture or "End Times" involving the return of all Jews to Israel, the opportunity for all Jews to finally convert, then the battle of Armageddon, and the Rapture -- with the Jews who fail to convert being in the "left behind" cohort.  I noticed today that MJ Rosenberg over at Josh's place picked up on my irony -- I have left a few comments there -- and he picked up on describing "End-Times" as "End-of-the-Jews-Times."  I like his construction of the Irony.   All of this is about a book that finally broke the Taboo of talking about all this.

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt are about as uber-Establishment as one can get in Academic Diplomatic History and Foreign Relations studies.  Mearsheimer holds a distinguished chair in the department of International Relations and Political Science at the University of Chicago, Walt holds a named chair at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.  They are situated in the midst of the Realist School of Foreign Policy.  Back in 2002 they were asked by Atlantic to write a feature article on the influence of the "Israel Lobby" on the decision to invade Iraq -- and over several years the Atlantic editors revised the manuscript, but ultimately decided not to publish.  Some months later, the London Review of Books did decide to publish, and both that article, and an extended version published on the Kennedy School website (one that included the vast array of footnotes, but not the logo of Kennedy School) resulted in two phenonema -- the Kennedy School site had over 300 thousand downloads in a week -- and the London Review site sans footnotes, was equally stretched.  The authors were immediately attacked as anti-Semites, (mostly by folk who had hardly bothered to absorb the text), and eventually the Council on Foreign Relations organized a forum, (it was on C-Span which is how I found out about the article and the set-to).  It was probably the Council's according these scholars a proper venue with clear rules of discourse, that finally allowed the actual content of their article to be considered for what it said.

M&W's Thesis is fairly simple.  Understanding that Realists in International Relations/Foreign Policy deal in analysis of policy in terms of National Interests, they propound that the US and Israeli National Interests are not necessarly the same.  They were closer during the Cold War, when the possibilities of Soviet Influence spreading more widely in the Middle East were a concern, but since that time, interests have diverged.   In essence they suggest that the "Israel Lobby" had been a barrier to the Foreign Policy Community recognizing this change, and adjusting US policy accordingly. 

Much of the book (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2007) is devoted to a description of the components of this lobby.  The Authors make clear that American Politics from the get-go have always been about interest groups organizing and making coalitions to empower interests, and that the modern form of the lobby is essentially American, traditional, and not at all illegal or even a conspiracy -- they totally reject any form of conspiracy theory.  It is fairly open, and certainly subject to analysis.  The only thing that is really wrong is the Taboo -- the private and public pressures against those who would subject it to analysis by a normal scholar, or scholarly method, -- and the reality that any criticism will result in -- well what -- an attack from Alan Dershowitz?  Yes that, and many other things.  We know about Juan Cole being blacklisted at Yale last year, but just recently I have been reading (with delight) Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s Journals, and he tells of an effort (early 1960's) he was involved with organizomg a lunch for Senators, hosted by Bill Fullbright with the Arab Diplomats in DC, and only four US Senators were willing to chance coming to such a lunch.  Point being that what M&W describe is not all that new. 

But what they do publish is the core role that "Christian Zionists" play in the "Israel Lobby" -- and doing some counting, offer lots more Representatives and Senators than are elected by an essentially Jewish electorate.  Perhaps as much to the point, about half of the Jewish Electorate wants not so much a pro-Israel representative, just not a negative one, and otherwise are much more concerned with issues.  In essence, the core of the "Israel Lobby" positions may well not be the position of many American Jews.  In many respects, this is a negation of the "Israel Lobby" position.   As much as anything, many who currently support the "Israel Lobby" want to avoid examination of the Christian Zionist role -- which MJ at Josh's place called the "End-of-the-Jews" lobby, if you take the theology anywhere near seriously. 

Mearsheimer and Walt end their book with lots of recommendations, perhaps twenty, and some negations of recommendations from outside.  For instance, they do not recommend forming an alternative Lobby.  But what they do recommend without any caution is just talking -- get it up and talk about all this.  Deal with the taboos on the subjects.  I think this their greatest contribution, and in the sense that they locate the Christian Zionists with their narrative of End Times at the center of their side of the alliance, I think discussion is well advised. 

 

Imagine there's no telecoms

by emptypockets

This afternoon, on the outskirts of Lima, in a mountain village a mile and a half above sea level, all 46 children and each of their teachers are wired. Their laptops came courtesy of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, and a quarter million other Peruvian children will soon be wired as well, as are children in other pilot programs in Abuja, Nigeria; Villa Cardal, Uruguay; Samkha village, Thailand; Porto Alegre, Brazil; and Khairat, India.

(You can be, too, for $200 and a matching tax-deductible donation to give one to a child somewhere. The give-one-get-one program runs until Dec. 31.)

There are several things to say about this remarkable project, but first let me establish the basics. The OLPC laptops are small, power-efficient laptops built to withstand rugged conditions. Each has a microphone, a camera, a screen that can be viewed in bright daylight or in dark, a small amount of flash memory (no hard drive), and innovative wireless networking capabilities that I'll come back to in a minute.

They are open-source, run linux, and are produced, sold, and distributed by a non-profit academic group as a charitable enterprise -- not by a computer company. From what I can tell, the villages that receive them are poor, but children have clothing, access to clean water, limited electricity (the laptops can be charged from a wide range of voltages, solar panels, or a hand pull), and some educational infrastructure. Rather than sprinkle the laptops throughout the population of developing countries, OLPC is targeting individual villages and saturating them, so that every child in the village has his or her own personal computer to use at school and at home.

A number of criticisms have been leveled against the program, including that the money would be better spent on providing more teachers, and that the program seeks to destroy some natural harmony that exists between poor people and the land (for example, here). With regard to the latter, the ads for the give-one-get-one program, showing a black girl with a laptop perched on her head like a bucket of water, leaves itself particularly open to critique, implying as it does -- to me, anyway -- that the program is targeted to Africa (it's not) and that the recipients are supposed to swap basic resources for new technology and smile.

I'll come back to these two topics -- what you can learn from a computer that you don't learn from a teacher, and whether "living in harmony with nature" is a myth -- in a couple of posts down the road. Right now, though, I'd like to overlook the question of all the good that I think will come out of the project in the future... and look instead at some of the good that, perhaps, already has.

II Religion and Politics, reflections on Chris Hedges

by Sara

While I intend to integrate some of these books, the one in question here is Hedges, "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America."

Hedges became known as a NYTimes War Correspondant, Former Yugoslavia and before that Central America.  He had regional paper assignment prior to this, several years with the Christian Science Monitor, and much else.  He spent about 20 years in American war zones. 

Yet in "American Fascists," he presents himself as a child of the Manse, as one who comprehended from his Father's taking up the King message, and who took up the Gay Cause because of the influence of his father, and because his younger brother was Gay, but at Colgate during his student years, that cause was unacceptable.  Hedges also has a doctorate from Harvard Divinity;  In fact for the NYTimes, nothing is more ordinary that to hire an non-ordained Presbyterian with a Harvard Divinity Degree to cover the Middle East.  We need to comprehend the institutional matters here.  American Universities in Cairo and Beruit are both Presbyterian establishments.  They were authorized by the Ottomans, just as the primary schools in Palestine were offered to the Quakers in the 1870's and 1880's.  Likewise, the French were authorized to establish Military Schools, and the Germans, Technical Institutes.

In one sense I see Hedges as the well prepared Presbytertian Missionary moving into the field -- on the other hand, I see him as the hard edged Christian who comes out in hard dissent.  "War is a force that Gives Us Meaning" or to be much more specific, "What Every Person should Know about War" -- essentially a catalogue of what one would see anywhere in combat, -- well these are Hedges reviews of his Times pieces, and his cultural wealth is greater than just Who, What, When, and thus -- eventually, interpretation via "American Fascists."

Hedges generalizes what he experienced in the Middle East, both in Israel and Palestine and Lebanon, in Nicaragua, later in the Gulf War, and then in Bosina and Kosova.  After 20 years of reporting blood and combat, he came to an opposition posture. 

It was a combination of the Middle East and the Balkins that pushed Hedges to revisit his seminary teachings at Harvard.  (He also says it was a fear of eventually being shot).  Whatever, having detailed the lies told to the soldiers before they march out, or even sign up, He wrote a guide to the lies taught. 

So for anyone making their way from the Manse through the best schools, and the Harvard Divinity and then 20 years reporting on blood and gore for the NYTimes.  I hope the return to theology and religious history is a little squared. 

Hedges tells us that much of our public religious conflict in the US is due to a minority -- the ultra Calvinists related to R.J. Rushdoony -- part of a renegade Presbyterian Tradition, thus Hedges assumes the right to critique.  Rushdoony, he sees his teachings and influence as the contemporary source of dominationism, an ideology that has become political, but has also lent itself to be politicized in the name of anti-woman theology, and indeed anti-child theology, and opposition to all modern though since the age of the enlightenment.   

Hedges claims that about a quarter of American Christians have come under the direct or indirect influence of this conjuncture.  He spends much effort on how the Southern Baptists have become seduced, and a number of other smaller denominations, likewise.  He then moves on to a full description of how, at least in Kennedy's Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church near Fort Lauderdale the methods of dominionism have been used. His analysis is both theological and psychological.

He sees what has happened in some (by no means all) American Churches as not at all unlike what he comprehended in Bosnia and Kosovo.  There of course he witnessed heads being put on stakes during ethnic cleansing actions (god, that sounds like a brillo version), by one or another ethnic group.  (Remember supposedly UN Safe and not so safe zones?)  In effect, Hedges does not believe the theology of Falwell, Robertson, Dobson or Kennedy is much different from what he witnessed in Bosnia and Kosovo.  It is eliminationist, and he thinks we should pay attention.  Hedges acknowledges alternatives, but he sees these as fairly weak voices against the blood and gore he has witnessed, and the bullets he has dodged. 

He comes to the concept of Fascist recognizing that the term is a loaded, Western and essentially European and Christian Term, and while he ascribes the intentions to create a Fascist America to a small minority of the actors on the American scene,  He believes they have had too much influence given that the Rushdooney and dominionists have outsized influence given numbers. 

Again -- this is an ongoing series.   

   

Qaddafi gets his reward

by emptypockets

We've extensively covered the story of the six healthcare workers scapegoated by Libya, telling you how they were blamed for an outbreak of HIV in a Libyan hospital, raped, beaten, and tortured in prison, and sentenced to death (here, here, here, and here); how American corporations nevertheless continued to expand trade with Libya, and how political leaders like Hillary Clinton discouraged diplomatic efforts to free the workers (here and here); and, finally, how the EU as a whole, and France in particular, ultimately secured their last-minute release (here).

So it's only fitting that we bring you the final chapter: this week, Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi is in France, receiving his reward: the royal treatment, meetings with national leaders, and a deal for Libya to receive several nuclear reactors from France. Happy International Human Rights Week.

I don't know how to feel about this outcome. Was the visit this week a part of the original package, which included $400 million for the families of HIV-infected children, that Libya extorted from the EU before the medics were released? Or is the visit just what it feels like: a lollipop for the child who stops his tantrum, a $20 tip for the mugger who didn't take your whole wallet?

The most positive light I can see it in is a reference to the old chestnut of game theory known as "The Prisoner's Dilemma," in which a pair of players have the option of cooperating with or exploiting each other -- the rewards are higher if you both cooperate, but attempting to do so runs the risk of exploitation by your partner. The most successful strategy for years (up until a funny trick was discovered in 2004) has been "tit-for-tat" -- start off cooperatively, then do whatever your partner did the last time. If he's good to you, return the favor; if he screws you, screw him back next time.

This translates directly into political games, and is sometimes considered to be one of the guiding principles of cold war strategy. Perhaps France's Sarkozy, unlike the "never cooperate" strategy adopted by Clinton or the "always cooperate" strategy used by American business, is simply practicing "tit-for-tat": regardless of Qaddafi's past, his most recent action was beneficial, so he gets benefits. If Qaddafi acts well in the future, he'll presumably get more rewards; if not, he'll presumably be cut off until the next "turn." One thing to note about this strategy is that it doesn't mean you'll always "win" -- there will be events where your partner screws you -- but, in the end, you come out farther ahead than you would with any other strategy.

Considering that in the mid-1980s Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein appeared to be a well-matched pair of terroristic dictators, and today one has been pulled from a hole and hanged while the other has pitched his tent in the fertile fields of France (and I don't mean that in a dirty way), it would seem that "Prisoner's Dilemma" is a game Qaddafi plays well.

Ring the bells -- survival.

by Sara,

I know it may take a little reading between the lines to understand this parsed news release, (which I copy) of Antioch College alumni having just succeed in buying back their college.   Quality versus whatever market forces, -- Horace Mann lives.  This release is for me a profound cry, and now more effort to make it what it needs to be. Getting this far required 18 million, but we need at least 100 million to make all right.   

Back in the mid 50's, Holiday Magazine did a big spread on Antioch and called it a "Quaker Workcamp in the Woods" -- and I loved that description, even though it was not exactly why I applied and became an Antiochian. But it is why I am An Antiochian.  In those days, we were in the top five colleges in the US in Science PHD's, and I think one of the last of us, till we can revive things, just got a Nobel.

The Steve Schwerner noted as part of the Antioch salvation clan -- Brother of Mickey Schwerner, of Cheney, Goodman and Schwerner, of Philadelphia Mississippi died and got buried in a burned out Ford and a earthen damn for the cause of race matters.  That was in part about Voter Rights, and I hope no one ever forgets Mickey and the others.  And beyond that why we want to save our unique and 155 year old college from Wal-mart-ification of Higher Education.  Oh yea, much more than one who died for Civil Rights -- the point is what kind of education moves folk to the crux of the cultural battles?  to participate and ultimately win victories?

The shame is that Progressive America should have to buy back its institutions from whoever acquired them, or put them into deep debt.  But the clock has been turned, and now is the time to celebrate but demand that change be real, yet never again should the real state of affairs be cloaked in whatever PR.

Newsnight tonight had a thing about the huge Harvard endowment. (Apparently larger than the budget of Belgium).   Yes nice, while Antioch hangs on by tooth and nail.  But the real issue is if Antioch can get tooth and nail together, can we compete with Harvard for the kind of students that should go to Antioch?  Different styles, can we accomodate all of them?  Stephen Gould and Coretta Scott King?  (and Sistersara?)   Please variations on the theme to the future. 

 

ANTIOCH UNIVERSITY

                                                        Immediate Release

                                                              December 11, 2007

YELLOW SPRINGS, OHIO – The Antioch University Board of Trustees announced today that it has approved a resolution instructing Chancellor Toni Murdock to begin exploring the possibility of transferring the ownership of Antioch College to a separate, free-standing liberal arts institution with its own board of trustees.

Under the resolution, the Chancellor will immediately convene “a work group of administrators and others with the expertise and experience necessary to examine the feasibility of such a transfer of the College and to identify the major issues affecting the University's interest in such a transaction.” If feasible, it would be transferred to the Antioch College Continuation Corporation, an independent, Ohio non-profit corporation that has been formed by a group of College alumni, major donors, former trustees and emeritus faculty.

After exploring the feasibility of such a transfer and negotiating with authorized representatives of the new corporation, the Chancellorwill present a draft letter of intent laying out the proposed terms of any such transfer to the University trustees for consideration “as soon as possible but not later than its regularly scheduled meeting set for February 21-23, 2008.” If an agreement is reached that satisfies both parties, the transfer would take effect on July 1, 2008.

“This action taken by the University trustees replaces the Agreements in Principle recently negotiated with the Antioch College Alumni Board of Directors,” said Art Zucker, chair of the University Board of Trustees. “The goal, if feasible, is to reach an agreement that provides the College with a fully independent board exclusively devoted to continuing its financial stability, sustainability and academic excellence.”

Nancy Crow, who helped negotiate the earlier agreement with the trustees as president of the Antioch College Alumni Association, hailed the new development. “We are thrilled to be able to join forces with the leaders of the Antioch College Continuation Corporation,” Crow said. “Their efforts represent what the Alumni Association has been working so diligently to achieve over the past six months. We will coordinate our efforts under the guidance of the new corporation to build on our detailed plan for continuing and enhancing College operations.”

Both parties to the discussion acknowledged that there are a host of issues to be sorted out before any transfer can be considered or approved.  “But this is an exciting and potentially historic moment for the entire University.” said Frances Degen Horowitz, co-chair of the Antioch College Continuation Corporation and president emerita of the City University of New York Graduate Center, who graduated from Antioch College in 1954.  “Working closely with the entire Antioch College community, we are confident that we can raise the necessary resources to stabilize the College and secure its standing as one of the nation’s foremost liberal-arts institutions.”

Horowitz noted that directors of the new corporation have already pledged to contribute more than $7 million by the end of December, 2007, to be held in trust until a transfer is approved. “As we proceed with our negotiations,” she added, “we will need immediate and substantial financial support from alumni and all friends of Antioch College. Working together, we have an unprecedented opportunity to restore the College to its roots and establish a substantial endowment for the College to ensure its long-term sustainability.”

In addition to Horowitz, the Antioch College Continuation Corporation is co-chaired by Eric Bates, deputy managing editor of Rolling Stone magazine, who graduated from Antioch College in 1983. Both Bates and Horowitz are former presidents of the Antioch College Alumni Association and former members of the Antioch University Board of Trustees.

Joining them as directors of the Antioch College Continuation Corporation are seven other graduates of Antioch College:

• Laura Markham (secretary), PhD, clinical psychologist and editor of Your Parenting Solutions; former member of the University Board of Trustees; Antioch ’80    
• David Goodman (treasurer), businessman and principal of North Arrows LLC and e-Solar  Properties LLC; Antioch ’69, Stanford MBA, ‘71
• Catherine Jordan,  president of Achieve Minneapolis and chair of the accreditation task force of the Antioch College Alumni Board of Directors; Antioch ’72
• Steve Schwerner, emeritus Antioch College professor and former Dean of Students; current member of the Antioch College Alumni Board of Directors, Antioch ’60
• Lee Morgan, president of The Antioch Company, Antioch ’66
• Barbara Winslow, associate professor of adolescence social studies and women’s studies at Brooklyn College; former member of the Antioch University Board of Trustees; current member of the Antioch College Alumni Board of Directors; Antioch ’68
• Terry O. Herndon, entrepreneur and businessman; Antioch ’57

The prior Agreements in Principle reached with the Alumni Association in November called for the lifting of the suspension of operations of the College provided that certain financial benchmarks were met. Under the new approach, however, the University will no longer operate the College beyond June 30, 2008.  Any College operations beyond that date would be the sole responsibility of the new corporation. In the event that an agreement is not reached between the parties, the Board has further directed the Chancellor to study and report back to the Board on the feasibility of the University’s own plans to reopen the College after the June 30 suspension of operations.

“The Chancellor is currently studying whether a transfer of operations can be accomplished in a way that protects the interests of the University while also ensuring the viability of the College,” said Zucker. “No final decision has been made by the Board, but we are taking a serious look at the issue and are working closely with directors of the new corporation to afford this endeavor every chance of success.”

Directors of the Antioch College Continuation Corporation expressed enthusiasm for the current state of negotiations. “I joined this endeavor because I believe it represents a significant step forward for Antioch College,” said Steve Schwerner, who worked at Antioch from 1976 to 2003. “If we can reach agreement on a transfer, the College will finally have the autonomy and resources it needs to be able to move forward.”

The George W. of the Wallace family speaks

by Kagro X

Just a quick hit here -- something I'd like to do a bit more of here at TNH, just to do my part to keep the conversation going.

Chris Wallace talked to The Politico, under the oh-so-convincing headline: Wallace: Dems are 'fools' to boycott Fox.

Here's what grabbed my eye (thanks to an assist from Oliver Griswold of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center):

Being the son of legendary newsman Mike Wallace, and in broadcast news for several decades, the Fox host has definitely been able to observe the mainstream media up close for quite some time.

But on his four-year anniversary this week, Wallace said there is something he’s discovered only since joining the Rupert Murdoch-owned network.

“I used to laugh and dismiss this talk about how we were — that there was a liberal bias in the mainstream media,” Wallace said. “But I have to say in the four years I’ve been at Fox, I’ve come to believe that there is a bias.”

Shorter Wallace: "I have to say in the five days I've been in this bank in Stockholm..."