Fisk: Obama Needs More Than Empty Rhetoric for Lasting Progress in the Middle East

Posted on December 28, 2008 by RagBlog

A Palestinian demonstrator holding a Palestinian flag flees as an Israeli soldier holds a position behind him. Photo: GETTY.

How can anyone believe there is ‘progress’ in the Middle East?
By Robert Fisk / December 27, 2008

A test of Obama’s gumption will come scarcely three months after his inauguration

If reporting is, as I suspect, a record of mankind’s folly, then the end of 2008 is proving my point.

Let’s kick off with the man who is not going to change the Middle East, Barack Obama, who last week, with infinite predictability, became Time‘s “person of the year”. But buried in a long and immensely tedious interview inside the magazine, Obama devotes just one sentence to the Arab-Israeli conflict: “And seeing if we can build on some of the progress, at least in conversation, that’s been made around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be a priority.”

What is this man talking about? “Building on progress?” What progress? On the verge of another civil war between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, with Benjamin Netanyahu a contender for Israeli prime minister, with Israel’s monstrous wall and its Jewish colonies still taking more Arab land, and Palestinians still firing rockets at Sderot, and Obama thinks there’s “progress” to build on?

I suspect this nonsensical language comes from the mental mists of his future Secretary of State. “At least in conversation” is pure Hillary Clinton – its meaning totally eludes me – and the giveaway phrase about progress being made “around” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is even weirder. Of course if Obama had talked about an end to Jewish settlement building on Arab land – the only actual “building” that is going on in the conflict – relations with Hamas as well as the Palestinian Authority, justice for both sides in the conflict, along with security for Palestinians as well as Israelis, then he might actually effect a little change.

An interesting test of Obama’s gumption is going to come scarcely three months after his inauguration when he will have a little promise to honour. Yup, it’s that dratted 24 April commemoration of the Armenian genocide when Armenians remember the 1.5 million of their countrymen – citizens of the Ottoman empire slaughtered by the Turks – on the anniversary of the day in 1915 when the first Armenian professors, artists and others were taken off to execution by the Ottoman authorities.

Bill Clinton promised Armenians he’d call it a “genocide” if they helped to elect him to office. George Bush did the same. So did Obama. The first two broke their word and resorted to “tragedy” rather than “genocide” once they’d got the votes, because they were frightened of all those bellowing Turkish generals, not to mention – in Bush’s case – the US military supply routes through Turkey, the “roads and so on” as Robert Gates called them in one of history’s more gripping ironies, these being the same “roads and so on” upon which the Armenians were sent on their death marches in 1915. And Mr Gates will be there to remind Obama of this. So I bet you – I absolutely bet on the family cat – that Obama is going to find that “genocide” is “tragedy” by 24 April.

By chance, I browsed through Turkish Airlines’ in-flight magazine while cruising into Istanbul earlier this month and found an article on the historical Turkish region of Harput. “Asia’s natural garden”, “a popular holiday resort”, the article calls Harput, “where churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary rise next to tombs of the ancestors of Mehmet the Conqueror”.

Odd, all those churches, isn’t it? And you have to shake your head to remember that Harput was the centre of the Christian Armenian genocide, the city from which Leslie Davis, the brave American consul in Harput, sent back his devastating eyewitness dispatches of the thousands of butchered Armenian men and women whose corpses he saw with his own eyes. But I guess that all would spoil the “natural garden” effect. It’s a bit like inviting tourists to the Polish town of Oswiecim – without mentioning that its German name is Auschwitz.

But these days, we can all rewrite history. Take Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s cuddliest ever president, who not only toadies up to Bashar al-Assad of Syria but is now buttering up the sick and awful Algerian head of state Abdelaziz Bouteflika who’s just been “modifying” the Algerian constitution to give himself a third term in office.

There was no parliamentary debate, just a show of hands – 500 out of 529 – and what was Sarko’s response? “Better Bouteflika than the Taliban!” I always thought the Taliban operated a bit more to the east – in Afghanistan, where Sarko’s lads are busy fighting them – but you never can tell. Not least when exiled former Algerian army officers revealed that undercover soldiers as well as the Algerian Islamists (Sarko’s “Taliban”) were involved in the brutal village massacres of the 1990s.

Talking of “undercover”, I was amazed to learn of the training system adopted by the Met lads who put Jean Charles de Menezes to death on the Tube. According to former police commander Brian Paddick, the Met’s secret rules for “dealing” with suicide bombers were drawn up “with the help of Israeli experts”. What? Who were these so-called “experts” advising British policemen how to shoot civilians on the streets of London? The same men who assassinate wanted Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and brazenly kill Palestinian civilians at the same time? The same people who outrageously talk about “targeted killings” when they murder their opponents? Were these the thugs who were advising Lady Cressida Dick and her boys?

Not that our brave peace envoy, Lord Blair, would have much to say about it. He’s the man, remember, whose only proposed trip to Gaza was called off when yet more “Israeli experts” advised him that his life might be in danger. Anyway, he’d still rather be president of Europe, something Sarko wants to award him. That, I suppose, is why Blair wrote such a fawning article in the same issue of Time which made Obama “person” of the year. “There are times when Nicolas Sarkozy resembles a force of nature,” Blair grovels. It’s all first names, of course. “Nicolas has the hallmark of any true leader”; “Nicolas has adopted…”; “Nicolas recognises”; “Nicolas reaching out…”. In all, 15 “Nicolases”. Is that the price of the Euro presidency? Or will Blair now tell us he’s going to be involved in those “conversations” with Obama to “build on some of the progress” in the Middle East?

Source / The Independent

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Dr. Stephen R. Keister : ‘Citizens, There Is No Time to Lose’

Posted on December 28, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Leaping on a table, a pistol in each hand, Camille Desmoulins cried, ‘To the Bastille.’

‘Something in my subconscious clicked last night, and part of the time I lay awake considering the report in The Washington Post about the drastic cuts in Medicaid due to the economic collapse in the United States.’

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / December 28, 2008

It is said that young men see visions and old men dream dreams. Last night I dreamt of a scene in a motion picture that I saw at about the age of 14, in 1935. The picture was “A Tale of Two Cities” and in an opening scene an aristocrat’s carriage overran a small Parisian waif without slowing down or stopping. The result, not noted in the motion picture, was one Camille Desmoulins, leaping on a table, a pistol in each hand, and crying “citizens, there is no time to lose, to the Bastille.”

Something in my subconscious clicked last night, and part of the time I lay awake considering the report in The Washington Post about the drastic cuts in Medicaid due to the economic collapse in the United States. In addition I had watched the PBS news report of the California deficit, the response in the state legislature by the Democrats to alleviate it by raising taxes, and the Republican answer, i.e. further reduce taxes for the wealthy and drastically curtail social programs, including Medicaid. People in shelters, eating in food lines, and “cut their social services!” It called to mind Anatole France’s comment, “It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg.”

Further, yesterday afternoon I had read a Commonwealth Fund report about how poorly the chronically ill fare in the United States in relation to seven other nations, i.e. Australia, Canada, France, Germany, The Netherlands, New Zealand and The United Kingdom. More than half (54%) of chronically ill patients in the U.S. did not get recommended care, did not fill prescriptions, or did not see a doctor when they were sick because of the cost, compared with 7% to 36% in the other countries. (France and the Netherlands scored the best.) About one-third of U.S. patients — again, the highest proportion among the eight countries — experienced medical, medication, or lab/diagnostic test errors, with a similar share encountering poorly coordinated care, including duplication of tests or medical records that were unavailable at the time of an appointment.

The Commonwealth Fund has been doing excellent objective work in tracking health care in the United States; however, I am perplexed that they do not at length liaison with Physicians For A National Health Program (PNHP), or overtly support Rep.Charles Rangel’s bill in the House of Representatives, HR 676, which in essence is based on the PNH recommendations. HR 676 has something like 90 co-sponsors, but the House leadership has allowed it to languish in committee without debate. Of course, it causes one to wonder what obscene, financial incentive has caused the inaction in a Democratic controlled Congress.

A few words regarding Medicaid which is federally mandated and federally funded per formula, but under which each state is required to outline its own allocation of the funds. In many or most states, with the current depression, the funding is inadequate. This is extremely sad, for at best, Medicaid pays for a degree of medical care normally seen in third world nations. Prior to my retirement, 18 years ago, we were struggling in our office about how to accommodate Medicaid patients, in view of the fact that our income was consumed by over 55% overhead, and that the Medicaid payments were approximately 50% of our then not excessive fees for specialists in Internal Medicine. Thus, we were required to assign one morning a week for care of these folks. The next problem encountered, and we saw this again after my retirement when I volunteered at St. Paul’s Neighborhood Free Clinic, there was great difficulty in obtaining more sophisticated procedures such as CT Scans or MRIs, or consultations with surgeons, orthopedists, neurosurgeons, etc. Care was definitely restricted because these were poor people. Now many states are having to cut back care even further, thanks to the depression caused by the neo-liberal economics instituted during the Reagan years in the White House that has finally decimated our nation.

Yet, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Last month alone, employers slashed 533,000 jobs — the most in 34 years — with the jobless rate rising to 8.4%. With the loss of employment, of course, goes employer paid health insurance, as about 60% of American workers are covered by work related health care plans. Of course, through the COBRA provision the worker may take over his own insurance at an average of $4704 per year for an individual or $12,680 for a family, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation & Health Research and Educational Trust.. Other private insurance is offered but may include a deductible per year of $1000-$5000. Totally unaffordable.

We undoubtedly face a spiraling crises in health care. There are two viable plans on the table. And let me repeat: “viable.” There are several Senate versions being discussed but these are basically selling out to the insurance industry. Hence, the two: (1)the Obamaplan which still maintains private health insurance, but institutes a “Medicare for all” option for those without health insurance, or those who would elect to switch to it. This would be administered by a public “insurance company” with government supervision and provide coverage similar to that provided to”members of Congress,” and (2)the plan incorporated in HR676, single payer, universal health care, which is discussed in detail at the PNHP website. I personally, as a member of PNHP and The American College of Physicians, which has endorsed the plan, would prefer the second; however, either would be preferable to the travesty that exists for health care in the United States and its domination by the insurance industry.

If I may be permitted a few thoughts about the insurance industry. When I think about the pitch of the insurance companies to the naive American public I think of Edith Sitwell’s comment, “The public will believe anything, as long it is not founded on truth.” Right on! In some way the American public looks at the insurance industry as a benevolent ally. Not so. An insurance company, like any corporation, is out to make money for its owners, managers and shareholders. The practice of medicine was coopted by the collusion of the insurance companies some 30 years ago in the guise of the HMO or IPA, advertised to the medical profession and public as having the advantage of cost containment and efficiency. Indeed there was containment, containment of adequate care to the patient (now known as “customer”) and income and ability to make his/her own decisions to the physician (now known as “the provider”). There have been record profits for the insurance industry, record salaries and bonuses for the CEOs, and a record amount of money spent lobbying our elected representatives. The Bush administration, like the Reagan administration earlier, has encouraged the insurance takeover. The Bush administration passed the Medicare prescription plan, which is a limited value to the patient but provides an ongoing excessive profit to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, Further, masked as a great bargain to the patient, the Bush administration has flummoxed the public with “Medicare Advantage,” a subtle method of depleting the Medicare Fund and turning the management over to the private insurance industry.

I started my practice in 1950 and shortly thereafter came face to face with the insurance industry. In those days folks were sold “health insurance” by door to door salesmen who would stop by to pick up their premium, of, let us say, $5 per week. Thus, if ill or incapacitated, the insurance would pay a fixed amount a month for defraying hospital costs, doctors bills, etc. I remember well, one elderly lady who developed cancer of the stomach, and was told that the disease predated her purchase of the policy some ten years earlier. Of course, this was absurd. I turned the matter over to The Pennsylvania Insurance Commission and the lady was paid forthwith. Thus, I learned, early in my career that one should always “read the fine print” and if fraud was evident that the Insurance Commissioner would indeed be a great friend of the public.

Be sure that the insurance companies will spend billions of dollars on frightening the public via TV Commercials, and will spend like mad with our elected representatives to oppose either the Obama or PNHP plans. We will hear of the imperfections of health care in Canada or the UK. We will see unhappy folks (either actors or malcontents) demeaning the care in other countries. We will hear that we are going to have “socialized medicine” thrust upon us. (We already have it in the V.A. System and Medicare). We will hear that it takes forever to get a doctor’s appointment in Canada, which may well be true, as it is in the USA, if one wants a specific doctor at a famous institution. The American public is in for an indoctrination that would make Joseph Goebbels proud. Remember, in every nation there may be some hitches in medical care; no system is perfect. However, most European systems, Canada, and Australia have a near 90% approval by the citizens. In all these other nations one has free choice of family doctor, specialist, or hospital, and in most instances the GPs still make house calls and communicate directly by telephone with their patients rather than relegating that duty to nurse or PA.

Unhappily, most physicians away from medical centers, are not politically educated. As a matter of fact, the hierarchy of our local county medical society felt privileged tosit behind President Bush on the podium when he campaigned locally in 2004. Hardly intellectual sophistication! Yet most doctors, if you as patients discuss the matter with them and provide the PNHP website, may well get aboard. Many are tired of the hassle and malpractice exposure provided by being subordinates of the insurance industry. I have approached my personal internist, an excellent physician, who has a rightful concern. “If 49 million people without insurance are enabled to choose their own doctor, there are not enough of us to go around.” True. Thus, in view of the fact that the average medical student graduates with $120,000 tuition debt and hence opts for a well paying specialty, thus not providing enough family doctors, I would suggest that one of two things be included in either plan. My suggestions, with each having the qualification that the graduate would do general practice in an under-served area for a specified number of years: (1) Government subsidy of tuition for qualified students at existing medical schools, or (2) a “medical academy,” similar to West Point or Annapolis, to train healers. If we can train to kill, we can train to heal.

We have a difficult task ahead. There are a great number of folks nationally trying to get decent health care in this country, so please sign on. Contact your representatives, first ascertaining his/her connections to the insurance industry at Open Secrets, and demand that either the Obama or PNHP plan be enacted. If your representative or senator is a Republican, ask him to show some Christian Charity to the poor, the dispossessed, the halt and the blind. Ask him to set aside his belief in the flawed economic theories of Milton Friedman, as they did not work in Chile or Argentina. Request that HR676 be debated by the full House. Perhaps then we will not be required to storm the Bastille.

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Tone Deaf GOP : Just Humming Along?

Posted on December 28, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

‘Chip Saltsman, pretender to the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee thought it would be funny to send a CD with 41 tasteless, demeaning racial parodies to his Republican buddies as a holiday gift.’

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / December 28, 2008

The GOP just can’t seem to shed its divisive and racially insensitive mantle of privileged intolerance and hate. Many Republicans still herd all black and hispanic people into the back entrances of their minds, and find raucous, race-bating, put-down musical parodies good for an attitude affirming chuckle. “Why no harm intended!”

Chip Saltsman, pretender to the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee who thought it would be funny to send a CD with 41 tasteless, demeaning racial parodies to his Republican buddies as a holiday gift makes my point. The tasteless gaffe caused an uproar. Saltsman still thinks the songs, produced for the ever sensitive, Rush Limbaugh, are “light hearted” and “good humor.”

What good old Chip has done here is to prove what my departed yellow dog Democrat Irish-stock father always enjoyed pointing out about South Texas politics, “The jackasses always stick out a head higher from everybody else.” His observation works across party lines and on the national level as well.

In the quiet confines of the private whites-only clubs and well-tithed all white Protestant churches many still do not see what all the uproar over the “clever little songs” is all about. It is dismissed as so much more thin-skinned political screaming from “those liberals.” Even one of the two African-American candidates for the chairmanship of the GOP National Committee, J. Kenneth Blackwell, reportedly called the disgust with the Republican’s “Barack the Magic Negro” racial ditty, mere “hypersensitivity.” A token dismissal?

Just to be sure they don’t regain any of the flood of Latino votes that went to the Democrats, the happy holiday hum-along CD also contained a tasteless treatment of Hispanics set to the music of our national anthem titled, “The Starspanglish Banner.”

While high profile Republicans like current party chairman, Mike Duncan, former GOP house speaker, Newt Gingrich, and many more in the GOP leadership have been quick to distance themselves from, and denounce Chip Saltsman’s musical miscue, I have to wonder how many of the other candidates for the GOP party chairmanship, who were, or were not, on the gift list for the now-toxic CD will issue statements categorically denouncing Saltsman and his lack of musical taste.

[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]

Please see ‘Magic Negro’ and ‘Star Spanglish Banner’ : Republicans are Equal-Opportunity Offenders by Mike Allen / The Rag Blog / Dec. 27, 2008

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New Gaza War : The Neighborhood Bully Strikes Again

Posted on December 28, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

“A loud-mouthed bully?”: Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem December 21, 2008. Photo by Gali Tibbon / Pool / Reuters.

‘Once again, Israel’s violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom.’
By Gideon Levy / December 28, 2008

Israel embarked yesterday on yet another unnecessary, ill-fated war. On July 16, 2006, four days after the start of the Second Lebanon War, I wrote: “Every neighborhood has one, a loud-mouthed bully who shouldn’t be provoked into anger… Not that the bully’s not right – someone did harm him. But the reaction, what a reaction!”

Two and a half years later, these words repeat themselves, to our horror, with chilling precision. Within the span of a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, the IDF sowed death and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets never approached in all their years, and Operation “Cast Lead” is only in its infancy.

Once again, Israel’s violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom.

What began yesterday in Gaza is a war crime and the foolishness of a country. History’s bitter irony: A government that went to a futile war two months after its establishment – today nearly everyone acknowledges as much – embarks on another doomed war two months before the end of its term.

In the interim, the loftiness of peace was on the tip of the tongue of Ehud Olmert, a man who uttered some of the most courageous words ever said by a prime minister. The loftiness of peace on the tip of his tongue, and two fruitless wars in his sheath. Joining him is his defense minister, Ehud Barak, the leader of the so-called left-wing party, who plays the role of senior accomplice to the crime.

Israel did not exhaust the diplomatic processes before embarking yesterday on another dreadful campaign of killing and ruin. The Qassams that rained down on the communities near Gaza turned intolerable, even though they did not sow death. But the response to them needs to be fundamentally different: diplomatic efforts to restore the cease-fire – the same one that was initially breached, one should remember, by Israel when it unnecessarily bombed a tunnel – and then, if those efforts fail, a measured, gradual military response.

But no. It’s all or nothing. The IDF launched a war yesterday whose end, as usual, is hoping someone watches over us.

Blood will now flow like water. Besieged and impoverished Gaza, the city of refugees, will pay the main price. But blood will also be unnecessarily spilled on our side. In its foolishness, Hamas brought this on itself and on its people, but this does not excuse Israel’s overreaction.

The history of the Middle East is repeating itself with despairing precision. Just the frequency is increasing. If we enjoyed nine years of quiet between the Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War, now we launch wars every two years. As such, Israel proves that there is no connection between its public relations talking points that speak of peace, and its belligerent conduct.

Israel also proves that it has not internalized the lessons of the previous war. Once again, this war was preceded by a frighteningly uniform public dialogue in which only one voice was heard – that which called for striking, destroying, starving and killing, that which incited and prodded for the commission of war crimes.

Once again the commentators sat in television studios yesterday and hailed the combat jets that bombed police stations, where officers responsible for maintaining order on the streets work. Once again, they urged against letting up and in favor of continuing the assault. Once again, the journalists described the pictures of the damaged house in Netivot as “a difficult scene.” Once again, we had the nerve to complain about how the world was transmitting images from Gaza. And once again we need to wait a few more days until an alternative voice finally rises from the darkness, the voice of wisdom and morality.

In another week or two, those same pundits who called for blows and more blows will compete among themselves in leveling criticism at this war. And once again this will be gravely late.

The pictures that flooded television screens around the world yesterday showed a parade of corpses and wounded being loaded into and unloaded from the trunks of private cars that transported them to the only hospital in Gaza worthy of being called a hospital. Perhaps we once again need to remember that we are dealing with a wretched, battered strip of land, most of whose population consists of the children of refugees who have endured inhumane tribulations.

For two and a half years, they have been caged and ostracized by the whole world. The line of thinking that states that through war we will gain new allies in the Strip; that abusing the population and killing its sons will sear this into their consciousness; and that a military operation would suffice in toppling an entrenched regime and thus replace it with another one friendlier to us is no more than lunacy.

Hezbollah was not weakened as a result of the Second Lebanon War; to the contrary. Hamas will not be weakened due to the Gaza war; to the contrary. In a short time, after the parade of corpses and wounded ends, we will arrive at a fresh cease-fire, as occurred after Lebanon, exactly like the one that could have been forged without this superfluous war.

In the meantime, let us now let the IDF win, as they say. A hero against the weak, it bombed dozens of targets from the air yesterday, and the pictures of blood and fire are designed to show Israelis, Arabs and the entire world that the neighborhood bully’s strength has yet to wane. When the bully is on a rampage, nobody can stop him.

Source / Haaretz.com

Thanks to Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog

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‘Magic Negro’ and ‘Star Spanglish Banner’ : Republicans are Equal-Opportunity Offenders

Posted on December 28, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Chip Saltsman, who managed Mike Huckabee’s campaign, said the songs, produced for Rush Limbaugh, are just “light hearted political parodies.”

‘Republican operative Chip Saltsman distributed a CD containing “Barack the Magic Negro” as part of his campaign to be elected chairman of the Republican National Committee; Republican chairman ‘appalled.’

By Mike Allen / December 27, 2008

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan issued a statement Saturday distancing the party’s leadership from one of the GOP’s best-known operatives, Chip Saltsman, who distributed a CD containing “Barack the Magic Negro” as part of his campaign to be elected chairman of the Republican National Committee next month.

Duncan, who has served the campaigns of five presidents dating back to Richard Nixon, is seeking reelection as the party’s 60th chairman in a hotly contested race that includes Saltsman and several other viable candidates.

Saltsman, 40, was former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s campaign manager during the Republican presidential primaries.

Saltsman sent Republican National Committee members, who will choose the next chairman, a CD by conservative political satirist Paul Shanklin, “We HATE the USA.” It contains the controversial track, which was popular on conservative radio. Shanklin’s Web site promises “absolutely the best parodies in talk radio.”

Duncan’s statement, in full: “The 2008 election was a wake-up call for Republicans to reach out and bring more people into our party. I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction.”

Saltsman’s candidacy for national party chair is endorsed by Huckabee and fellow Tennessean Bill Frist, the former Senate majority leader.

Saltsman defended his song selection to The Hill’s Reid Wilson, who first reported the gift.

“Paul Shanklin is a longtime friend, and I think that RNC members have the good humor and good sense to recognize that his songs for the Rush Limbaugh show are light-hearted political parodies,” Saltsman told The Hill.

Saltsman said in a statement later Saturday that the title was a reference to an opinion article in the Los Angeles Times in March 2007 with the headline, “Obama the ‘Magic Negro,” which argued that “The Illinois senator lends himself to white America’s idealized, less-than-real black man.”

Saltsman’s statement said: “Liberal Democrats and their allies in the media didn’t utter a word about David Ehrenstein’s irresponsible column in the Los Angeles Times. … But now, of course, they’re shocked and appalled by its parody on the Rush Limbaugh Show. I firmly believe that we must welcome all Americans into our party and that the road to Republican resurgence begins with unity, not division. But I know that our party leaders should stand up against the media’s double standards and refuse to pander to their desire for scandal.”

Saltsman’s marketing campaign comes as Republicans grapple with ways to offer a counterpoint to President-elect Obama at a time when the country is largely supportive of his appointments and policies.

The national GOP ticket lost badly in November among many growing voter groups – including young people, Hispanics and suburbanites. Party officials says that a voter base consisting of the South plus social conservatives is not a dependable way to win elections.

In the “Republican Plan for Victory” that is Saltsman’s platform in the chairman’s race, he writes: “I believe that countering an emboldened Democratic Party, led by the Obama-Reid-Pelosi troika, requires an aggressive national strategy. This campaign’s message cannot depend upon traditional media outlets or communication methods. It will require building upon new media and developing and mastering new tactics.”

The disclosure by The Hill was met with an odd silence from Republican leaders. The story was posted at 12:10 p.m. on Friday, was quickly picked up by Talking Points Memo, and for a time was the banner headline on The Huffington Post, later replaced by Israeli’s strikes on Gaza.

Duncan issued his statement after Politico noted the party’s 22-hour silence.

Politico has exchanged e-mails with an aide to Saltsman, and will post a response when it arrives.

Saltsman is a former development director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and was elected chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party in 1998.

Source / Politico

The Star Spanglish Banner

‘Magic Barack’ AND ‘The Star Spanglish Banner’
By Mark Silva / December 27, 2008

It may not be enough that Chip Saltsman, a candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee, has recycled that bad Barack the Magic Negro tune in a CD of satirical songs that he has circulated to fellow Republicans. The tracks also include “The Star Spanglish Banner.”

Radio’s Rush Limbaugh already has been raked over the politically correct coals for supporting the tasteless takeoff on Puff the Magic Dragon that plays on racial prejudices about Barack Obama, president-elect of the United States. But now Saltsman, courting support for the national party’s chairmanship, has recycled the sad tune as part of a 41-tune CD of political songs by conservative satirist Paul Shanklin, as Politico.com tells the tale.

“Jose, can you see…

“Barack the magic Negro, lives in D.C…” (“Close-captioned for the thinking -impaired.”)

You get the drift.

Party tactician Chip Saltsman sent an emailing to RNC members with an attachment of political songs by the satirist Shanklin, according to Politico. The 41-track CD entitlled We Hate the USA includes other songs lampooning liberals, according to The Hill, such as Wright Place, Wrong Pastor, Love Client #9 and The Star Spanglish Banner

Saltsman was former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s campaign manager during the 2008 presidential primaries.

RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, seeking another term as chairman of the national party, has blasted Saltsman’s tactics in a statement released today, according to Politico.

“The 2008 election was a wake-up call for Republicans to reach out and bring more people into our party,” Duncan says today. ” I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction.”

Hear here. Wear where?

Source / The Swamp

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Ron Ridenour : Half-Century of Cuban Revolution: ‘Challenges’

Posted on December 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Some Cuban youth have turned to western styles. Here, a young Cuban with a punk hair style watches a tattoo artist apply a tattoo at the Metal City Festival in Santa Clara, Cuba, Oct. 27, 2007. Photo by by Javier Galeano / AP.

A successful revolution must be one in permanent development, one that can solve the basic needs of adequate housing, food and clothing; otherwise people will seek solutions elsewhere.

By Ron Ridenour / The Rag Blog / December 27, 2008

[This is the second in a two-part series on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution by Rag Blog contributor Ron Ridenour. For Part I of this series, go here.]

Seventy days after the Cuban revolutionary victory, the National Security Council under the Eisenhower-Nixon regime issued a directive, March 10, 1959, to bring “another government to power in Cuba.” This decision was made precisely because Cuba’s young leadership initiated politics of solidarity among human beings. A week later, President Eisenhower ordered the CIA to train Cuban exiles for an invasion of their country, according to Eisenhower’s “The White House Years: Waging Peace [sic] 1956-1961”.

The Cuban revolution was declared to be socialist by Fidel Castro speaking before an approving crowd as US planes flew over Havana dropping bombs. The April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion had begun. Following its rapid failure, President JF Kennedy instituted a blockade of Cuba, which remains today.

In 1967, President LB Johnson, then bogged down in war against the Indo-Chinese peoples, expressed to a reporter: “We were running a goddamn Murder Incorporated in the Caribbean.” He said so after learning the CIA had used the Mafia to try to assassinate Fidel Castro. The CIA was also infecting humans, animals and crops with poisons, terrorizing its people from the air and on the ground. (See my book, “Backfire: The CIA’s Biggest Burn”, Editorial Jose Marti, Havana, 1991.)

Readers here are familiar enough with the history of US subversion against the Cuban revolution that I merely touch on it, in order to set the background for why the original Marxist ideas of political democracy and workers control, of equality in economy without privileges to any sector or leaders were not thoroughly forthcoming, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union and Cuba’s other trading partners in Comecon. In addition to external attacks, which have twisted development, are adverse decisions taken by the national government as well as realities of underdevelopment.

Now, however, nearly two decades after the fall of Comecon and as Cuba begins to celebrate its 50th anniversary, it is the only remaining socialist country, at least in the western hemisphere (perhaps in the entire world given that China and the Indo-Chinese countries have converted nearly totally into capitalist economies). Cuba maintains its socialist roots and Marxist socialist ideology although the “Special Period” concessions to capitalist measures installed for shear survival have created inequality: a growing gap between a new poor and a new rich.

“This country can self-destruct; this Revolution can destroy itself, but they [the US] can never destroy us; we can destroy ourselves, and it would be our fault,” so spoke Fidel Castro, November 17, 2005, about the consequences of a double economy and decay in morality and consciousness.

Four areas of greatest popular discontent are: a) the double economy, two currencies; b) too much reliance on imports and not enough national production; c) perpetual lack of sufficient housing made worse by this year’s hurricane destructions; d) insignificant improvement in worker empowerment, with few exceptions.

A large part of the population has become disillusioned. It steals and hustles simply to meet basic needs, and many fall into the pit of consumerism, pursuing individual greed. These growing sectors have rejected the motto set by the revolution — in the words of Che — “The ultimate and most important revolutionary aspiration: to see man liberated from alienation.”

The “new class”, of which Fidel also spoke three years ago, includes private farmers, self-employed artisans and handymen, a large number who legally earn convertible currency at their jobs, some who receive large sums of remittances from family members living abroad, and a growing sub class of thieves.

Those who must live exclusively on national pesos can not afford to buy basic items, such as shampoo and soaps, clothes, hardware, household appliances or even sufficient food stuff—not to mention repair materials for their residences, which can not be found in pesos. The amount of items remaining on subsidized rations is insufficient for survival. People, especially in the large cities, must find ways of supplementing their meager earnings.

A renowned economist, Dr. Omar Everleny, told me: “You can’t stimulate people with morality, with revolutionary propaganda, with anti-imperialism for a lifetime. People get tired of this and they must eat. Sure, everybody goes to the plaza for the marches, but when they return home they demand that the state provides them with their needs.”

Almost all the department stores in Havana, for instance, now only sell goods in convertible currency (cucs). The cheapest radio, for example, costs 13 cucs and is driven, foolishly enough, only on batteries. The store did not have batteries when I bought mine. I finally found batteries (6 cucs) after searching in 15 stores. The total price (24 pesos per cuc) came to 456 pesos, which is over twice the minimum monthly wage.

One sees youths, who have never worked, spending more money drinking beer in one session than a pensioner must live on for an entire month. These same teenagers often adorn themselves in gaudy t-shirts advertizing US capitalism and imperialism, promoting the FBI or the US military—whose illegal base on occupied Cuban territory is a torture chamber. Some of these youths grease their hair, wear their pants midway down their asses, and jabber on mobile telephones, which costs more to buy and speak on than in the rich capitalist west. When I asked some why they behaved thusly, they replied that “it is the fashion.” Maybe so in the decadent west but very few people in Cuba have the money to adopt such a life style even if they wished to, and why should they.

And there are far more cars and motorcycles in the streets than ever before, and fewer bicycles. Most cars are privately owned and all parts and the gasoline must be bought in cucs. The price of gasoline is as high as European prices and is double or more the cost in the US. And the state sells bicycles from China only in cucs.

The brain drain to the capitalist world, which the government speaks of lamentably, is a growing phenomenon, but it is also internal. More and more car owners are using their vehicles, especially the old US cars, as taxis. Some do so legally by buying a license, paying taxes and insurance; many do not. Taxi drivers earn more money in one day than my friend, a former captain of Cuban ships, who risked his life as an infiltrator inside enemy lines (the CIA), in an entire month. Acquaintances who have doctorate degrees, who were heads of media outlets, officers and other professionals have left their positions to find ways of earning convertible currency, such as taxi chauffeurs.

The double economy and its negative consequences are so rampant that the government has allowed the film industry to make films with this theme. The most recent one, “Horn of Plenty” (“Cuerno de la abundancia”), revolves around the greed and envy connected with this inequality. Rather than concluding, as one would expect by a propaganda-oriented state-run medium, the people involved did not learn their lesson.

Yet most media do not address this problem, or at least do not come up with analyses or solutions. The youth daily, Juventud Rebelde, does have a column of complaints from readers concerning specific failures of agencies and institutions, usually having to do with the lack of promised services and reparations. There are also a few magazines with limited press runs and audiences that do go a bit deeper sometimes: La Geceta, Cajman Barbuda, Caminos.

Caminos is published by the Martin Luther King Memorial Center and is distributed somewhat widely in pesos. It can do so because of donations from solidarity people such as Pastors for Peace.

While no coges lucha (don’t fight city hall) is still a common motto, some Cubans are acting to overcome that anti-revolutionary attitude—which is generated from a deaf bureaucratic institutionalized structure. The MLK center is a protagonist of fighting that attitude. Its director, Rev. Raul Suarez, is so respected that he is an elected delegate to the National Assembly. His center is also a casa comunitaria (community house) run on Paulo Freire participatory sociology principles, seeking to stimulate people to involve themselves in projects to improve the community. While this is progress there are only eight such centers in the entire of Havana.

The next half-century

Once Fidel became ill and stepped down from government, his brother Raul won the next elections. Many see him as an innovator. He has broadened some rights, such as that anyone with hard currency can buy imported mobile telephones, computers, cars, etc. and rent luxurious hotel rooms. But that does not affect the vast majority of Cubans. During his term thus far, and also due to the most damaging hurricanes in modern history, the gap between the new rich and a relative poor sector is increasing. Some think Raul will take the country more in the direction of China. Signs include: granting more land to private farmers; greater monetary incentives for farm production teams; the raising of retirement age by five years (women from 55 to 60; men from 60 to 65); increased credits and trade with China, buying everything from cheap items made by over-exploited workers to modern buses, trains and all sorts of manufactured items for energy and infrastructure.

The fact that Cuba has survived the wrath of US imperialism, whereas no other country attempting socialism has (we must wait more for Venezuela’s development to make a judgment here), is a miracle in itself and enough reason for solidarity people abroad not to be disillusioned. Nevertheless, 70% of the population was born after 1959 and much of it demands greater results than has been forthcoming. One cannot placate these demands by harping on the gains of, for example, free and full medical care, especially when service is less today than for ten years ago, because so many medical workers are abroad on missions.

A successful revolution must be one in permanent development, one that can solve the basic needs of adequate housing, food and clothing; otherwise people will seek solutions elsewhere as is evidenced by so many people leaving Cuba for economic gain. And for those who remain, they are glad if they have family members working abroad, including the land of the enemy, who send them benefits from capitalism’s exploitative economy. That is not the way to teach one’s people that socialism has greater virtues than capitalism.

People ask: why is the best service, the best production made by those earning lots of money in convertible currency? Is that not evidence that privatization (capitalism) is more effective?

The answer must lay in having confidence in the workers to run the farms and factories, to eliminate the hated and incompetent bureaucracy, to instill true debate and democratic decision-making. We must note that no working class has had the real power or exercised it, in order to build real socialism, or any system for that matter. And true democracy is impossible without the mass of people holding the cards. Perhaps, as some interpret the ideas of Marx, this cannot happen until world capitalism is defeated and swept aside so that the construction of socialism by the working class itself can begin. The progressive regional alliances taking root in Latin America is a good sign for the future of survival and for socialism to grow IF capitalism is rejected.

The globalized economic crisis upon us could be an excellent opportunity for working classes the world over to shed capitalist solutions and begin the process of socialist transformations. But that requires sacrifice and struggle at the risk of jail and death at the hands of the owners’ police and soldier traitors. That also requires prepared revolutionary forces. My reading of the times, unfortunately, is that most of the workings classes are not ready, which means that to solve their immediate needs they could go to the right, even towards fascism. The culture of fear with its terrorist wars and rampant racism throughout the institutions and governments in Europe, the US and elsewhere, could very well lead the world into a new fascist era.

The progressive regional alliances taking root in Latin America is a good sign for the future of survival of an independent continent, one in which socialism sows roots, and for the rebirth of a better socialism in Cuba.

[Ron Ridenour, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, is an award-winning writer and author whose special interest is Latin America. Ridenour was a sixties activist who wrote and edited for that decade’s underground press. He now lives in Denmark and also posts at http://www.ronridenour.com/.]

Also see Ron Ridenour: Half-Century of Cuba’s Revolution: ‘Solidarity’ by Ron Ridenour / The Rag Blog / Dec. 23, 2008

The Rag Blog

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Henry Kissinger: Criminal Extraordinaire

Posted on December 27, 2008 by RagBlog

Well, here’s a story, in his own words, of a criminal who walked away from his crimes scot free. That makes a fairly strong case that all the criminals currently in the White House and other parts of the federal administration will also walk away scot free. Once again, shame for my heritage.

This archive is remarkable, and contains all the transcripts of Kissinger’s secret tapes.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog


“We can bomb the bejesus out of them all over North Vietnam.” Archive Publishes Treasure Trove of Kissinger Telephone Conversations
Edited by William Burr / December 23, 2008

Comprehensive Collection of Kissinger “Telcons” Provides Inside View of Government Decision-Making; Reveals Candid talks with Presidents, Foreign Leaders, Journalists, and Power-brokers during Nixon-Ford Years
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 263 – Part 1

Washington, D.C. – Amidst a massive bombing campaign over North Vietnam, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon candidly shared their evident satisfaction at the “shock treatment” of American B 52s, according to a declassified transcript of their telephone conversation published for the first time today by the National Security Archive. “They dropped a million pounds of bombs,” Kissinger briefed Nixon. “A million pounds of bombs,” Nixon exclaimed. “Goddamn, that must have been a good strike.” The conversation, secretly recorded by both Kissinger and Nixon without the other’s knowledge, reveals that the President and his national security advisor shared a belief in 1972 that the war could still be won. “That shock treatment [is] cracking them,” Nixon declared. “I tell you the thing to do is pour it in there every place we can…just bomb the hell out of them.” Kissinger optimistically predicted that, if the South Vietnamese government didn’t collapse, the U.S. would eventually prevail: “I mean if as a country we keep our nerves, we are going to make it.”

The transcript of the April 15, 1972, phone conversation is one of over 15,500 documents in a unique, comprehensively-indexed set of the telephone conversations (telcons) of Henry A. Kissinger—perhaps the most famous and controversial U.S. official of the second half of the 20th century. Unbeknownst to the rest of the U.S. government, Kissinger secretly taped his incoming and outgoing phone conversations and had his secretary transcribe them. After destroying the tapes, Kissinger took the transcripts with him when he left office in January 1977, claiming they were “private papers.” In 2001, the National Security Archive initiated legal proceedings to force the government to recover the telcons, and used the freedom of information act to obtain the declassification of most of them. After a three year project to catalogue and index the transcripts, which total over 30,000 pages, this on-line collection was published by the Digital National Security Archive (ProQuest) this week.

Kissinger never intended these papers to be made public, according to William Burr, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, who edited the collection, Kissinger Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977. “Kissinger’s conversations with the most influential personalities of the world rank right up there with the Nixon tapes as the most candid, revealing and valuable trove of records on the exercise of executive power in Washington,” Burr stated. For reporters, scholars, and students, Burr noted, “Kissinger created a gift to history that will be a tremendous primary source for generations to come.” He called on the State Department to declassify over 800 additional telcons that it continues to withhold on the grounds of executive privilege.

The documents shed light on every aspect of Nixon-Ford diplomacy, including U.S.-Soviet détente, the wars in Southeast Asia, the 1969 Biafra crisis, the 1971 South Asian crisis, the October 1973 Middle East War, and the 1974 Cyprus Crisis, among many other developments. Kissinger’s dozens of interlocutors include political and policy figures, such as Presidents Nixon and Ford, Secretary of State William Rogers, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Robert S. McNamara, and Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin; journalists and publishers, such as Ted Koppel, James Reston, and Katherine Graham; and such show business friends as Frank Sinatra. Besides the telcons, the Kissinger Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977 includes audio tape of Kissinger’s telephone conversations with Richard Nixon that were recorded automatically by the secret White House taping system, some of which Kissinger’s aides were unable to transcribe.

A series of unforgettable moments are captured in the transcripts, not least involving Kissinger’s complex and difficult relationship with Richard Nixon. Repeatedly, the national security adviser used his skills in flattery and connivance to help build up the president’s image and stay in his good graces. During the Jordan crisis in September 1970, Kissinger told the media that he had awakened the President to brief him on King Hussein’s military actions against Palestinian guerillas. But a transcript of his call to the President the next day recorded him as informing Nixon: “in light of the fact that there was nothing you could do, we thought it best not to waken you.”

The telcons also illustrate other Kissinger’s efforts to spin the media, monitor and control the process of decision-making, disparage rivals, keep important associates, such as his patron Nelson Rockefeller, in the loop, and win over critics:

  • After Gerald Ford shuffled his cabinet in November 1975, removing Kissinger as national security adviser and shifting Donald Rumsfeld from his chief-of-staff position to be Secretary of Defense, Kissinger spoke to Secretary of the Treasury William Simon. “The guy who cut me up inside this building isn’t going to cut me up any less in Defense,” he noted.
  • In an August 13, 1974, conversation with Elliott Richardson after Nixon resigned, Kissinger disparaged George H.W. Bush as a candidate to replace Gerald Ford as Vice President. “I am not as high on George Bush, as some others are, partly because of his lack of experience.”
  • In a conversation with President Nixon on the illegal wiretap scandal in June 1973, Nixon threatened to go to political war with Democrats if they pressed the issue. “Lets get away from the bullshit,” Nixon stated angrily. “Bobby Kennedy was the greatest tapper.” The President even suspected his own phone had been wiretapped in the early 1960s. “[J.Edgar Hoover] said Bobby Kennedy had [the FBI] tapping everybody. I think that even I’m on that list,” President Nixon told Kissinger. When Nixon noted that the wiretap scandal would “catch some of your friends,” Kissinger responded: “Well, I wouldn’t be a bit unhappy.”
  • In a bizarre conversation with anti-war activist/poet Alan Ginsburg on April 23, 1971, Kissinger discussed meeting with ardent opponents of the Nixon administration. Ginsburg suggested the meeting, joking that “It would be even more useful if we could do it naked on television. “I gather you don’t know how to get out of the war,” Ginsburg is recorded as stating. “I thought we did,” Kissinger responded, “but we are always interested in hearing other views.”

In the April 15, 1972, conversation about bombing North Vietnam, Nixon recalled that bombing had failed to defeat Ho Chi Mhin’s forces in the past.

Nixon: “Of course, you want to remember that Johnson bombed them for years and it didn’t do any good.”

Kissinger: But Mr. President, Johnson never had a strategy; he was sort of picking away at them. He would go in with 50 planes; 20 planes; I bet you we will have had more planes over there in one day than Johnson had in a month.

Nixon: Really?

Kissinger: Yeah.

Source / The National Security Archive

Thanks to Mariann Wizard and Jeff Segal / The Rag Blog

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Passive Solar: Living Without Furnaces in the Cold

Posted on December 27, 2008 by RagBlog

This is the kind of innovation that will be required around the world in short order. We love reading our Friends at Earth Family Alpha: they always have a positive outlook and make incredibly imaginative suggestions about how we can go forward, just as does this article.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

Berthold Kaufmann and his wife, Dorte Feierabend, with their daughters in their “passive house” in Darmstadt, Germany. Photo: Rolf Oeser for The New York Times.

No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in ‘Passive Houses’
By Elisabeth Rosenthal / December 26, 2008

DARMSTADT, Germany — From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace.

In Berthold Kaufmann’s home, there is, to be fair, one radiator for emergency backup in the living room — but it is not in use. Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann’s new “passive house” and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer.

“You don’t think about temperature — the house just adjusts,” said Mr. Kaufmann, watching his 2-year-old daughter, dressed in a T-shirt, tuck into her sausage in the spacious living room, whose glass doors open to a patio. His new home uses about one-twentieth the heating energy of his parents’ home of roughly the same size, he said.

Architects in many countries, in attempts to meet new energy efficiency standards like the Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design standard in the United States, are designing homes with better insulation and high-efficiency appliances, as well as tapping into alternative sources of power, like solar panels and wind turbines.

The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000 outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle. Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants’ bodies.

And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to build than conventional houses.

Decades ago, attempts at creating sealed solar-heated homes failed, because of stagnant air and mold. But new passive houses use an ingenious central ventilation system. The warm air going out passes side by side with clean, cold air coming in, exchanging heat with 90 percent efficiency.

“The myth before was that to be warm you had to have heating. Our goal is to create a warm house without energy demand,” said Wolfgang Hasper, an engineer at the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt. “This is not about wearing thick pullovers, turning the thermostat down and putting up with drafts. It’s about being comfortable with less energy input, and we do this by recycling heating.”

There are now an estimated 15,000 passive houses around the world, the vast majority built in the past few years in German-speaking countries or Scandinavia.

The first passive home was built here in 1991 by Wolfgang Feist, a local physicist, but diffusion of the idea was slowed by language. The courses and literature were mostly in German, and even now the components are mass-produced only in this part of the world.

The industry is thriving in Germany, however — for example, schools in Frankfurt are built with the technique.

Moreover, its popularity is spreading. The European Commission is promoting passive-house building, and the European Parliament has proposed that new buildings meet passive-house standards by 2011.

The United States Army, long a presence in this part of Germany, is considering passive-house barracks.

“Awareness is skyrocketing; it’s hard for us to keep up with requests,” Mr. Hasper said.

Nabih Tahan, a California architect who worked in Austria for 11 years, is completing one of the first passive houses in the United States for his family in Berkeley. He heads a group of 70 Bay Area architects and engineers working to encourage wider acceptance of the standards. “This is a recipe for energy that makes sense to people,” Mr. Tahan said. “Why not reuse this heat you get for free?”

Ironically, however, when California inspectors were examining the Berkeley home to determine whether it met “green” building codes (it did), he could not get credit for the heat exchanger, a device that is still uncommon in the United States. “When you think about passive-house standards, you start looking at buildings in a different way,” he said.

Buildings that are certified hermetically sealed may sound suffocating. (To meet the standard, a building must pass a “blow test” showing that it loses minimal air under pressure.) In fact, passive houses have plenty of windows — though far more face south than north — and all can be opened.

Inside, a passive home does have a slightly different gestalt from conventional houses, just as an electric car drives differently from its gas-using cousin. There is a kind of spaceship-like uniformity of air and temperature. The air from outside all goes through HEPA filters before entering the rooms. The cement floor of the basement isn’t cold. The walls and the air are basically the same temperature.

Look closer and there are technical differences: When the windows are swung open, you see their layers of glass and gas, as well as the elaborate seals around the edges. A small, grated duct near the ceiling in the living room brings in clean air. In the basement there is no furnace, but instead what looks like a giant Styrofoam cooler, containing the heat exchanger.

Passive houses need no human tinkering, but most architects put in a switch with three settings, which can be turned down for vacations, or up to circulate air for a party (though you can also just open the windows). “We’ve found it’s very important to people that they feel they can influence the system,” Mr. Hasper said.

The houses may be too radical for those who treasure an experience like drinking hot chocolate in a cold kitchen. But not for others. “I grew up in a great old house that was always 10 degrees too cold, so I knew I wanted to make something different,” said Georg W. Zielke, who built his first passive house here, for his family, in 2003 and now designs no other kinds of buildings.

In Germany the added construction costs of passive houses are modest and, because of their growing popularity and an ever larger array of attractive off-the-shelf components, are shrinking.

But the sophisticated windows and heat-exchange ventilation systems needed to make passive houses work properly are not readily available in the United States. So the construction of passive houses in the United States, at least initially, is likely to entail a higher price differential.

Moreover, the kinds of home construction popular in the United States are more difficult to adapt to the standard: residential buildings tend not to have built-in ventilation systems of any kind, and sliding windows are hard to seal.

Dr. Feist’s original passive house — a boxy white building with four apartments — looks like the science project that it was intended to be. But new passive houses come in many shapes and styles. The Passivhaus Institut, which he founded a decade ago, continues to conduct research, teaches architects, and tests homes to make sure they meet standards. It now has affiliates in Britain and the United States.

Still, there are challenges to broader adoption even in Europe.

Because a successful passive house requires the interplay of the building, the sun and the climate, architects need to be careful about site selection. Passive-house heating might not work in a shady valley in Switzerland, or on an urban street with no south-facing wall. Researchers are looking into whether the concept will work in warmer climates — where a heat exchanger could be used in reverse, to keep cool air in and warm air out.

And those who want passive-house mansions may be disappointed. Compact shapes are simpler to seal, while sprawling homes are difficult to insulate and heat.

Most passive houses allow about 500 square feet per person, a comfortable though not expansive living space. Mr. Hasper said people who wanted thousands of square feet per person should look for another design.

“Anyone who feels they need that much space to live,” he said, “well, that’s a different discussion.”

Source / The New York Times

Thanks to Betsy Gaines / The Rag Blog

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Gaza : The Pictures Tell the Story

Posted on December 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

An explosion from an Israeli missile strike in the northern Gaza Strip.

A Palestinian man cries over the body of his son following an Israeli air strike in Gaza December 27, 2008.

In pictures: Massacre in Gaza
December 27, 2008

After announcements that a decision whether to increase the military attack on the Gaza Strip would be made tomorrow, Sunday, Israeli forces instead launched a major operation today.

The Israelis killed 150 Palestinians with more expected to die. The Israeli government says it is just the beginning.

Bodies of Palestinian Policemen killed in the Israeli airstrike.

For more pictures from the Israeli assault on Gaza, go to Uruknet.

Also see Two waves of Israeli airstrikes kill 205 Palestinians / Ma’an News Agency.

And Massive demonstrations in Jordan against Israel’s Gaza attack / M&C / Middle East

Thanks to S. M. Wilhelm / The Rag Blog

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Leaving Las Vegas : Can We Say Goodbye to Catalysmic Consumption and Hedonism?

Posted on December 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Lake Mead: Beautiful but shrinking. Photo by Ron Niebrugge / Niebrugge Images.

‘Will we finally accept the public policy and lifestyle changes that the real world now requires? Or will “Viva Las Vegas” always be America’s motto?’
By David Sirota / December 27, 2008.

There is something especially unsettling about visiting Las Vegas these days — and it is not the town’s lascivious culture. A voyage to Sin City in this moment of ecological and economic crisis is a journey to a giant concave mirror reflecting back the magnified — and ugly — truths about this epoch of cataclysmic consumption and hubristic hedonism.

Like most flights into Vegas, mine last week soared over a shrinking Lake Mead. Visually, the white strip around the manmade reservoir is beautiful — the bright chalk line separating the blue water from the red-brown desert evokes memories of a Bob Ross pastel painting minus “happy trees.” But it is a menacing harbinger of depletion. This water source for 22 million people is at its lowest level since the 1960s. Strained by the Southwest’s population explosion and by drought-accelerating climate change, the lake now stands a 50 percent chance of running dry by 2021, according to scientists.

As the plane descends, Vegas comes up on the horizon faster than ever. As one of the country’s quickest growing locales, it has become a massive blob suffocating a fragile ecosystem. Sans urban planning in the libertarian West, that unbridled growth encourages more roads, cars and smog.

At least McCarran Airport is only a short ride to the city’s core, but that is the most troubling area of all. Recently recast as a family-friendly Disneyland, downtown Vegas nonetheless retains its identity as the place where a recession-plagued country gambles away its dwindling paycheck.

Vegas’s colorful lights are supposed to be the “enjoyment” for those who inevitably lose at the slot machines. But with each twinkle the atmosphere warms. Despite advances in clean energy, electricity is still primarily produced with carbon-emitting sources that drive global warming. Indeed, the blinding Strip that prompts tourists’ drunken cheers is a monument to the same gluttony that helped make Nevada the fastest-growing emitter of carbon dioxide in the country.

Sure, Vegas boasts of renewable power investments and energy-saving light bulbs. But bragging about such efforts rather than simply shutting stuff off is as silly as Arnold Schwarzenegger trumpeting his supposed commitment to environmentalism by pledging to make one of his Hummers more fuel efficient.

But that’s always been the American way, hasn’t it? We don’t stop driving Hummers around a warming planet just like we don’t stop building population centers in deserts, just like we don’t stop gambling when wages drop just like we don’t stop wasting energy on casino signs. Why? Because it’s fun to drive tanks, live in desert climates, double-down on 11 and gape at bright lights in the big city. And during the years of cheap energy, income growth and seemingly endless water supplies, fun always trumped pragmatism.

That period, of course, has been supplanted by the Age of the Finite. And to its (few) sober visitors, Vegas implicitly asks whether our whole society is genuinely ready for that new reality.

Whether hanging Christmas lights in Toledo, buying SUVs in Boulder, taking long showers in Atlanta, residing in sprawly suburbs near Chicago, or overspending anywhere, we are all Las Vegans now. And because we have become so environmentally and economically interconnected, what happens in our own Vegas no longer stays in our own Vegas — it affects everyone.

Knowing that, are we ready to turn off some lights in our homes? Is it possible for Americans to forfeit McMansion dreams, drive smaller cars, take public transit, embrace water restrictions, or live in more sustainable geographies? Can we resist materialism, halt the bone-crushing stampedes to Wal-Mart, and stop needlessly spending beyond our means?

In other words, will we finally accept the public policy and lifestyle changes that the real world now requires? Or will “Viva Las Vegas” always be America’s motto?

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

[David Sirota is a best-selling author whose newest book, “The Uprising,” was just released this month. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network — both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is here.]

Source / AlterNet

Thanks to David Hamilton / The Rag Blog

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American Health Care : A Sucker Born Every Minute

Posted on December 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Grand huckster P. T. Barnum: “A sucker born every minute.”

‘The insurance industry and PhARMA are well aware of the TV watcher’s predilection to accept, without question, their lies, distortions, and innuendoes about the nature of and need for single payer, universal health care.’

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / December 27, 2008

P.T. Barnum’s famous statement plays well today, “There is a sucker born every minute.” In some yet undetermined way Barnum must have anticipated the age of television and the fact that for some obscure reason the average American feels that what he sees on television must be true. Therein we who favor single payer, universal health care face one of our two greatest problems. The insurance industry and PhARMA are well aware of the TV watcher’s predilection to accept, without question, their lies, distortions, and innuendoes about the nature of and need for single payer, universal health care and by deceit invade the psyche of the boob glued to the tube and convince him that his best interest is served only by a greedy, capitalistic group of corporations, thus, depriving him of his right to health care for him and his family.

The United States is one of two industrialized nations that permit advertising of prescription medication on TV. I recently noted that the various drug companies, in one year, spent half a billion dollars on sleep problems, and the medicines to correct them. Watching TV for an evening one can only imagine the cost to the pharmaceutical industry, as every other ad seems to espouse a different prescription nostrum for ailments real or imagined. One can only surmise the overall cost that, in the long run, will be passed on to the patient at the drug store. What is the purpose? One assumes that the pharmaceutical companies anticipate that the TV watchers will harass their family doctors into giving them “what I saw advertised on TV.” Of course any thoughtful physician will discuss the pros and cons of the request, and then make it very clear that he determines from scientific knowledge what medications he will prescribe, and not be guided by rank commercialism. If he does not do so it is time to suggest a change in physicians.

Excessive pharmaceutical prices are largely indigenous to the United States. On Nov. 21, 2008, in an article posted on TruthOut, an American expatriate in Paris, Steve Weissman, notes his initial experience with the French medical system. He writes.

The system here is surprisingly nonbureaucratic, at least for the patient.. My wife Anna and I picked our own general practitioners, specialists, and hospital care, with no insurance company restricting us to their list of doctors or hospitals. In fact, we found only two restrictions. The GPs could turn us down if they already had too many patients and they had to be within our geographical area so they would not have to travel too far when making a house call. Thus, under socialized medicine here in France, doctors still make house calls, even here in the boondocks where we live.

For each visit to the GP, we write a check for 22 euros. The system then reimburses us for 70% with a direct deposit to our bank account. For some particularly debilitating conditions the government pays the full 100%. To pay whatever the government doesn’t many people have private top-up insurance, which is very reasonably priced. At the pharmacy, we don’t pay at all. We simply present our health care cards; the government and top-up insurance then pay the pharmacist directly.

How good is the French medical care? Surveys by the W.H.O. rate the French system the best in the world, and far better than average health care in the United States.”

Again, please note that French TV does not carry pharmaceutical ads. But then the French physician seemingly does not need to be directed by corporate advertising and appears to be much better off for the lack of it. But our TV watchers should be cautioned that the profit making, politician-prostituting drug companies are not serving the viewers’ best interest but, amazingly will be believed by most Americans.

I practiced internal medicine and rheumatology for 40 years, retiring in 1990. Rousseau noted in his writings that we should each experience every situation presented to us as a life experience. In 1989 I received an invitation from a pharmaceutical company to attend a three day seminar at a luxury hotel in Phoenix, air-fare paid, with a “companion of my choice.” For 39 years I had never replied to such an invitation, but decided that it was my last chance for such an experience. Hence, I showed the invitation to my wife, and the “companion issue” was quickly answered. We flew from Erie, Pa. to Phoenix, were provided with a $500 a day room, meals, picnics, entertainment, and were required for three days to attend a three hour morning seminar. There were 200 physicians and “companions” in attendance, all with expenses paid. (At the first dinner I noted to my wife that a great number of physicians had brought their daughters, and she noted that I was extremely naïve.) In any event, after 24 hours I was educated about and ashamed by what was being done by the pharmaceutical companies in offering baksheesh to the medical profession. I gained an insight into the high price of drugs to the consumer.

There are many reasons for the high price of prescriptions in this country. Do not blame the pharmacist. There has been collusion between the Bush administration and big PhARMA, as well as the insurance industry. The Medicare Part D “prescription plan” is the outstanding example. This insult to the intelligence of the American public was passed by a whip-sawed congress in the middle of the night by 2-3 votes. The congressional sponsors, by and large, have been employed by the pharmaceutical industry since the bill’s passage. In return a grossly imperfect “prescription plan” with payments in the billions out of the Medicare Fund being made to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries for “administering” the plan, and with minimal control of the payment schemes presented to the subscribers. The bill specified prohibiting prescriptions from abroad, deemed price control on drugs as with the VA system out of bounds, and specified that there be no negotiations by Medicare on drug prices with the carriers. One prominent insurance company, which is also in the hospital business, has surreptitiously used the prescription drug plan as a vehicle for pedaling its HMO

We who are rational, discerning human beings must try our utmost to influence the Obama administration to (1) revise the Medicare part D prescription bill in the interest of the consumer rather than the corporations; (2) legislate against advertising of prescription drugs; and (3) establish hard and fast restrictions on the financial interaction between the pharmaceutical industry and the medical professions, including the ghost writing of professional papers for academic researchers by the pharmaceutical industry.

I have addressed one part of the problem regarding health care for all, but there is another chapter dealing with the distortions by the insurance companies and HMO’s which we will address at a later time. It is only the citizens of this nation, acting collectively, who can bring about change. We must make our voices heard by our elected representatives. And we should check out the contributions those representatives have received from the drug and insurance industries on any of several available web sites like OpenSecrets.org.

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Afghanistan Warlords, the CIA and the Little Blue Pill

Posted on December 27, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Illustration by Matt Weems / Afghanistan Watch.

‘The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes — followed by a request for more pills.’
By Joby Warrick / December 26, 2008

The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

“Take one of these. You’ll love it,” the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes — followed by a request for more pills.

For U.S. intelligence officials, this is how some crucial battles in Afghanistan are fought and won. While the CIA has a long history of buying information with cash, the growing Taliban insurgency has prompted the use of novel incentives and creative bargaining to gain support in some of the country’s roughest neighborhoods, according to officials directly involved in such operations.

In their efforts to win over notoriously fickle warlords and chieftains, the officials say, the agency’s operatives have used a variety of personal services. These include pocketknives and tools, medicine or surgeries for ailing family members, toys and school equipment, tooth extractions, travel visas, and, occasionally, pharmaceutical enhancements for aging patriarchs with slumping libidos, the officials said.

“Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people — whether it’s building a school or handing out Viagra,” said one longtime agency operative and veteran of several Afghanistan tours. Like other field officers interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity when describing tactics and operations that are largely classified.

Officials say these inducements are necessary in Afghanistan, a country where warlords and tribal leaders expect to be paid for their cooperation, and where, for some, switching sides can be as easy as changing tunics. If the Americans don’t offer incentives, there are others who will, including Taliban commanders, drug dealers and even Iranian agents in the region.

The usual bribes of choice — cash and weapons — aren’t always the best options, Afghanistan veterans say. Guns too often fall into the wrong hands, they say, and showy gifts such as money, jewelry and cars tend to draw unwanted attention.

“If you give an asset $1,000, he’ll go out and buy the shiniest junk he can find, and it will be apparent that he has suddenly come into a lot of money from someone,” said Jamie Smith, a veteran of CIA covert operations in Afghanistan and now chief executive of SCG International, a private security and intelligence company. “Even if he doesn’t get killed, he becomes ineffective as an informant because everyone knows where he got it.”

The key, Smith said, is to find a way to meet the informant’s personal needs in a way that keeps him firmly on your side but leaves little or no visible trace.

“You’re trying to bridge a gap between people living in the 18th century and people coming in from the 21st century,” Smith said, “so you look for those common things in the form of material aid that motivate people everywhere.”

Among the world’s intelligence agencies, there’s a long tradition of using sex as a motivator. Robert Baer, a retired CIA officer and author of several books on intelligence, noted that the Soviet spy service was notorious for using attractive women as bait when seeking to turn foreign diplomats into informants.

“The KGB has always used ‘honey traps,’ and it works,” Baer said. For American officers, a more common practice was to offer medical care for potential informants and their loved ones, he said. “I remember one guy we offered an option on a heart bypass,” Baer said.

For some U.S. operatives in Afghanistan, Western drugs such as Viagra were just part of a long list of enticements available for use in special cases. Two veteran officers familiar with such practices said Viagra was offered rarely, and only to older tribal officials for whom the drug would hold special appeal. While such sexual performance drugs are generally unavailable in the remote areas where the agency’s teams operated, they have been sold in some Kabul street markets since at least 2003 and were known by reputation elsewhere.

“You didn’t hand it out to younger guys, but it could be a silver bullet to make connections to the older ones,” said one retired operative familiar with the drug’s use in Afghanistan. Afghan tribal leaders often had four wives — the maximum number allowed by the Koran — and aging village patriarchs were easily sold on the utility of a pill that could “put them back in an authoritative position,” the official said.

Both officials who described the use of Viagra declined to discuss details such as dates and locations, citing both safety and classification concerns.

The CIA declined to comment on methods used in clandestine operations. One senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the agency’s work in Afghanistan said the clandestine teams were trained to be “resourceful and agile” and to use tactics “consistent with the laws of our country.”

“They learn the landscape, get to know the players, and adjust to the operating environment, no matter where it is,” the official said. “They think out of the box, take risks, and do what’s necessary to get the job done.”

Not everyone in Afghanistan’s hinterlands had heard of the drug, leading to some awkward encounters when Americans delicately attempted to explain its effects, taking care not to offend their hosts’ religious sensitivities.

Such was the case with the 60-year-old chieftain who received the four pills from a U.S. operative. According to the retired operative who was there, the man was a clan leader in southern Afghanistan who had been wary of Americans — neither supportive nor actively opposed. The man had extensive knowledge of the region and his village controlled key passages through the area. U.S. forces needed his cooperation and worked hard to win it, the retired operative said.

After a long conversation through an interpreter, the retired operator began to probe for ways to win the man’s loyalty. A discussion of the man’s family and many wives provided inspiration. Once it was established that the man was in good health, the pills were offered and accepted.

Four days later, when the Americans returned, the gift had worked its magic, the operative recalled.

“He came up to us beaming,” the official said. “He said, ‘You are a great man.'”

“And after that we could do whatever we wanted in his area.”

Source / Washington Post

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