Politics of Fear – Page 35 – The Wrongologist

Let’s Talk About Baltimore

Regarding Baltimore, the NYT says:

Hundreds of rifle-toting National Guard members began deploying here on Tuesday morning, lining one of the city’s main thoroughfares and taking up posts around a police station in western Baltimore that had been the scene of earlier protests.

From the start of the demonstration through Tuesday morning, 15 police officers were injured, 2 people were shot, both in the leg. And approximately 200 people were arrested. There is a night curfew. There are the predictable images of large groups of young black males, buildings on fire, up-armored cops and National Guard, and the shaking of jowls by media and politicians.

These stories are always depressingly similar: Police shoot a black guy. They obfuscate for several days. A protest turns violent, and some of those professing to be “victims” create victims of their own, mostly in their own neighborhoods. The police are happy to give them room to destroy property in black neighborhoods, but then draw the line when the crowd moves out of that prescribed area.

Something was bound to give in Baltimore. Check out this report from the Baltimore Sun, called “Undue Force“:

Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations [by the Baltimore police department].

According to state law, Baltimore cops cannot be sued for more than $200,000 for each “offense”. That statutory cap can be exceeded when there are multiple claims in a lawsuit, and if there is malice the cap may not apply. The largest settlement has been $500k. In total, the city has paid $5.7 million since January 2011, and that doesn’t count the $5.8 million spent by the city on legal fees to defend these claims against their police. Just a cost of doing business in Baltimore.

So, once the riot started the mayor and the governor called for calm. “Why can’t these people react non-violently?” Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic provides an answer:

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con.

Here is a series of tweets by Billmon: (edited by the Wrongologist)

…but the cops did not destroy the black industrial working class, or finance the slumlords, or redline poor neighborhoods. Police brutality isn’t the only reason that #BlackLivesMatter.
… And not being unlawfully killed is a pretty minimal standard for “mattering.”
…And so the policy “debate” becomes limited to: “Black men: Should we let the cops kill them or not?” Which is fucking sick. Or: “Should America have an incarceration rate that’s 10 times higher than the rest of developed world? Or just 5 times higher.”

We are witnessing a continuing trend in US policing: Violence against inanimate property equals violence against “the people”. It brings a disproportionate response, whether it is the Occupy movement, Ferguson, or Baltimore.

“Urban riots” always conjure up bad images and bad responses, like the riots in 1964 in Harlem and Philadelphia, and in Newark in 1967, all of which were ignited by allegations of police brutality. In Newark, Governor Richard J. Hughes (R) called up the National Guard. When they arrived, reports were coming in of black snipers roaming the city, and terrorists with dynamite and arms heading towards Newark. The result was 26 deaths and 725 wounded in Newark, but no snipers or terrorists were found.

Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R), channeling his inner Spiro Agnew, vowed to quell rioting by sending in 1,000 National Guard troops. From the Baltimore Sun:

Hogan said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a political ally of the new Republican governor, would sent 150 troopers plus additional resources to Baltimore.

Christie will never let a good crisis go to waste.

The ultimate outcome of Baltimore will predictably be calls for more law and ordering by the right, and more calls for inconsequential band aids by the left. Perhaps the policy debate ought to be broader than: “what will it take for police to stop killing black guys?”, although that would be a good start.

Police need to remember that since they have the authority and the power, they also have the responsibility to use both properly. It’s not the responsibility of the person they pull over, the person they want to question, or the person who is standing nearby, it’s THEIR responsibility.

Let’s face it, Americans live in a soft police state. Whites may not sense its severity or doom like urban black males, since their threat is to privacy. But the freedoms of most Americans have never been more threatened and violated by governments at the federal, state and local levels.

Here is Randy Newman singing his composition, “Baltimore“:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.

Moving the Goal Posts on Obamacare

Gallup has an informative chart about the declining percentage of uninsured in the US:

The percentage of uninsured Americans climbed from the mid-14% range in early 2008 and peaked at 18.0% in the third quarter of 2013. The uninsured rate has dropped sharply since Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) took effect at the beginning of 2014.

It is possible to argue that an improving economy and a falling unemployment rate may have accelerated the steep drop in the percentage of uninsured over the past year. However, the uninsured rate is significantly lower than it was in early 2008, before the Great Recession, suggesting that the recent decline is due more to Obamacare than to just an improving economy.

From NY Magazine on this trend:

It is starting to look possible that this trend is not some random fluke that has happened six straight quarters but is somehow related to the enactment of Obamacare. So any day now, we can expect conservative politicians and intellectuals to begin publicly rethinking their analysis of this law.

They were correct. Here is the 2010-2014 short version of the Republican viewpoint on the ACA:

The ACA will not reduce the number of people without health insurance. Indeed, it might make this problem we don’t consider a problem, even worse.

Now that the ACA looks to be doing the job, the 2015 short version of the Republican viewpoint is:

Everyone knew that the ACA would result in a huge drop in the number of people without health insurance — what does that prove? Besides, how can we really know that it all isn’t a big coincidence?

This is called “Moving the Goal Posts”. Wikipedia says it means

To change the criterion (goal) of a process or competition while still in progress, in such a way that the new goal offers one side an intentional advantage or disadvantage.

Here is an example of moving the goal posts. From Cliff Asness: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

In contrast, the rise in coverage is heralded by a myriad of Obamacare supporters as one of two major pieces of proof the law is working. But, how can something we knew before the fact be proof of anything?

Shorter: If we predict that something good will happen as a result of a new law, and that good thing happens, it doesn’t count as proof that the law served its purpose or was any good at all, unless Republicans say so.

The goal post movers also said Obamacare was a job killer. House Speaker John Boehner announced on March 17, 2010, five days before President Obama signed the ACA into law:

The President … continues to push his job-killing government takeover of health care that will hurt small businesses at a time when they need certainty, not more Washington tax hikes and mandates.

In 2011, House Republicans even passed the “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act” — the first time that any piece of congressional legislation ever had “job-killing” in its title. Sadly for both Mr. Boehner and the House Republicans, we have added 12 million new private sector jobs since the bill was passed.

There is a new J.D. Power survey which looks at enrollee satisfaction with the ACA. It finds that people who signed up for insurance on the exchanges were slightly more satisfied (69.6%) than people with non-exchange plans, usually through employers (67.9%). People re-enrolling on the exchanges were 74.4% satisfied. New enrollees for 2015 were 5.5% more satisfied than 2014 enrollees, who endured the disastrous roll-out of healthcare.gov. So people like the subsidies and they like their actual insurance policies.

Think about it: ACA forecasted costs have been consistently revised downwards. The number of uninsured are dramatically lower. Satisfaction with Obamacare is higher, and it didn’t kill jobs.

It’s utter Tyranny.

Maybe that’s why the Senate’s top five Republican leaders have cosponsored legislation to extend Obamacare insurance subsidies until 2017. The extension will give Republicans more time to again move the goal posts.

They should try this one: Now that Republicans control Congress and most state governments, we have way fewer uninsured.

Conservative policies work!

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 26, 2015

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether same-sex marriage bans are constitutional. Gay marriage is currently legal in 36 states. And, by the end of this Supreme Court term in June, same-sex couples will either be able to wed in all 50 states, or gay marriage bans may be restored in many states where they’ve been struck down.

Opponents of same-sex marriage shouldn’t worry, because Rep. Steve King (R-IA), the Pride of Iowa, has their backs. He proposed legislation to strip federal courts of the ability to make any ruling on marriage. His “Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act of 2015” would, if enacted, strip federal courts of jurisdiction in all cases related to marriage. The bill would leave the issue solely to State courts. Mr. King released this statement along with his bill:

For too long, federal courts have overstepped their constitutionally limited duty to interpret the Constitution. Rather, federal courts have perverted the Constitution to make law and create constitutional rights to things such as privacy, birth control, and abortion. These un-enumerated, so-called constitutionally-protected rights were not envisioned by our Founding Fathers.

He isn’t alone with the “my religion is supreme” arguments:

Mike Huckabee warns gay rights will outlaw Christianity: Because God-fearing Americans know that the gayz will destroy traditional marriage and Christianity. Is THAT what you want, America?

Anti-Gay Activists: We Are Prepared to Die to Fight Gay Marriage ‘Slavery: E.W. Jackson, the 2013 Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia said this at the National Press Club. Maybe dead anti-gay activists is not such a bad idea.

Iowa GOP official says Christians should enjoy special rights: No, Steve King didn’t say this, it was Tamara Scott, a Republican National Committeewoman. She conceded that Muslims had First Amendment rights, but she said Christianity should be favored under US law.

Look, these charlatans have to whip up their base, those Gulfstreams aren’t going to buy themselves.

So in honor of their ideas, the anti-gay right gets a free McDonald’s next time in NYC:

GOP jerks twerk for Koch dough. Very hard to un-see this:

Loretta Lynch finally gets ticket punched to DC:

Europe still thinking about an acceptable migrant solution:

Earth Day comes and goes with speech-making and little change:

Is a Mob at The Gates?

There is an idea deep in the American psyche that there always is “a mob at the gates”. The mob wants in so that they can take advantage of the good things we have, or they want to lay waste to our culture and way of life. Therefore, we must be vigilant, because our innocence and openness makes us vulnerable to exploitation or infection from outside. This is well-documented in Robert Reich’s 1986 book, Tales of a New America.

We have a history of fearing and demonizing the “others”. It has been a strong weapon in hands of America’s conservatives. In the 1950’s we were visited by McCarthyism. In the early 1950s, conservatives were deeply frightened by Communism’s advances overseas (communists were ruthless and Godless!). By hunting alleged communists in the State Department, suggesting that the real threat lay not overseas but at home, Joseph McCarthy played brilliantly to those fears.

Sadly, the McCarthy period wasn’t the first time in American history that we demonized outsiders who we thought were trying to climb inside the gates. When they tried to get in, we attacked people from their homeland who were already here. We had slavery, followed by Jim Crow. Hyper-nationalists went after German-Americans during World War I, and we rounded up Japanese-Americans during World War II. After McCarthy was discredited, cultural conservatives moved on to “protect” America against supposed internal threats from black militancy, feminism, and the gay-rights movement.

After 9/11, President Bush defended Islam. He called Islam “a faith based upon love, not hate,” and even visited a mosque. In a Presidential debate with Al Gore, Bush condemned the fact that “Arab-Americans are racially profiled.”

But today, would-be Republican presidential candidates are turning on Muslim-Americans. From Peter Bienart in the Atlantic:

In January, the Republican presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal argued that “it is completely reasonable for [Western] nations to discriminate” against Muslims in their immigration policies, on the grounds that radical Islamists “want to destroy their culture.”

In February…Mike Huckabee, declared, “Everything [President Obama] does is against what Christians stand for, and he’s against the Jews in Israel. The one group of people that can know they have his undying, unfailing support would be the Muslim community.”

In March, after New York City announced that public schools would close for two Muslim holidays, Todd Starnes, a Fox News contributor, lamented, “The Islamic faith is being given accommodation and the Christian faith and other religious faiths are being marginalized.”

In fact, Bienart thinks that if George W. Bush were seeking the Republican presidential nomination today, he’d be excoriated for his view of Islam. Why are Republicans more hostile to Muslims and Islam today than they were after 9/11? And why are American Muslims, who in 2000 mostly voted Republican, replacing gays and feminists as the right’s chief culture-war foe?

Could there be a new McCarthyism emerging in the Republican Party?

A 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center found that Republicans were 31 percentage points more likely than Democrats to be “very concerned” about the threat of “Islamic extremism” around the world, and were 25 percentage points more likely to be concerned about Islamic terrorism in the US.

Most conservatives are happy to bomb ISIS or drone the Taliban, but many have lost the appetite for American boots on the ground against Islamic terrorists. And by reconceiving the Islamist danger as a domestic problem, (exactly as McCarthy did with Communism in the 1950’s), conservatives can now appear to fight it ferociously, without having to invade yet another Arab country.

Republicans all across the US have warned that Sharia might be adopted in parts of the US, and that American Christians might thus be subjected to Muslim law. Bobby Jindal said (falsely) that Muslims have established “no-go” zones for non-Muslims in some neighborhoods in Europe, with the implication that they might do the same in the US.

Muslims make up only 1% of the US population. They are not marching in the streets. For the most part, they constitute a small, culturally conservative minority that wants little more than to be left alone. They don’t have the numbers to punish Republicans at the ballot box for demonizing them.

For the rest of us, that makes the immorality of the Republican’s position clear.

Promoting Islamophobia is unlikely to hurt the GOP politically, and it will help them with their base. The February and March 2016 primaries are predominantly in southern states, where Islam is more reviled than elsewhere in the country.

So, look for the rhetoric on culture war issues, including the threat allegedly posed by Muslim-Americans to become even more outrageous in 2016, as Republicans launch their new McCarthyism against the mob both inside, and outside our gates.

Monday Wake Up Call – April 20, 2015

Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA), is the guy that beat Eric Cantor in a Republican primary and then won Cantor’s seat in Congress in what was a huge 2014 electoral shocker, since Cantor was House Majority Leader at the time, and outspent Brat 40-1. Well, TPM reports that Mr. Brat said on a radio show that Obamacare was moving America away from a free market system and making the country more like North Korea. He went on to contrast North and South Korea:

Look at every country in the world…Look at North Korea and South Korea. It’s the same culture, it’s the same people, look at a map at night…one of the countries is not lit, there’s no lights, and the bottom free-market country, all Koreans, is lit up. See you make your bet on which country you want to be, right? You want to go free market.

Sadly for Mr. Brat, South Korea has a compulsory national health care system.

Brat makes Cantor seem like Einstein. It’s important to know that Mr. Brat was a professor of economics at Randolph–Macon College where he taught business ethics, among other courses. Earlier, he said that Obamacare would cost the country $2 Trillion, a statement that PolitiFact says is false.

There’s really nothing to do but laugh in Mr. Brat’s face. Today, a middle-school level of seriousness is all that the Republican Party is up for, with their racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, religious hypocrisy, moralism, and warmongering. By far their most dangerous characteristic is their juvenile and uninformed thinking. The sabotage of political discourse seems to be the only thing that matters to them.

So, in light of the Brat, rather than start your day with a head-banging tune designed to wake him up, Wrongo wants to try bringing you into the week in a kinder, gentler way. So for the next few weeks at least, we will start with: Your Monday moment of Zen.

Today we feature a Hermit Thrush, the state bird of Vermont. Walt Whitman made the hermit thrush a symbol of the American voice in his elegy for Abraham Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”. Here is a singing Hermit Thrush:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9vHS6JdHog

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can watch and hear the Hermit Thrush here.

Monday’s Hot Links:

National Guard troops referred to Ferguson protesters as ‘enemy forces’, emails show. Documents detailing the military mission divided the crowds that the National Guard would be likely to encounter into “friendly forces” and “enemy forces” – the latter apparently including the protesters.

Cirque du Soleil is in advanced talks with two private equity groups to sell a majority stake. Cirque du Soleil has been working with Goldman Sachs since last year to find a strategic partner. The valuation looks to be between $1.5 and $2.0 billion. Guess who is about to jump the shark?

These gorgeous maps of the moon were put together at the request of NASA using data captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Wide Angle Camera (WAC) and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). All named features larger than 53 miles (85 km) in diameter or length were included.

Iowa chiropractor loses license after sexual contact while performing exorcisms on several patients. “My back hurts,” so, he prescribes treatment in the form of an exorcism, which followed some sexy time.

Investors want to build a multi-tier mall at the Grand Canyon. They want to construct a retail complex based around a tram that planners are calling the Escalade, which will stretch from the rim down to the floor, providing easy access to both a fragile ecosystem and sacred place to Native Americans.

Roommates stab each other in iPhone versus Android debate. Two roommates in Tulsa, Oklahoma took the usual geek argument to the next level, stabbing each other with broken beer bottles. When the police arrived, they found the roommates had been drinking and arguing about smartphones.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 19, 2015

Sunday’s reason to fear for humanity:

Médecins Sans Frontières, (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders) just announced that it will launch search and rescue operations for undocumented migrants trying to reach Europe by boat from North Africa. Last year more than 3,400 people died at sea. This year, the death toll is predicted to be even higher, since more are trying to make it, and the European Union has cut funding for at-sea assistance by 80%.

The BBC reports the prevailing view in Europe is that helping save boat people will just encourage more to take the risk of a Mediterranean crossing. In fact, the EU has funded a border control operation, called Triton, with fences in some countries, and which only operates vessels close to Europe’s coast at sea. From Arjan Hehenkamp, MSF’s general director:

Europe has turned its back on people fleeing some of the worst humanitarian crises of our time…The decision to close doors and build fences means that men, women and children are forced to risk their lives and take a desperate journey across the sea.

So, Europe is saying, “Stay away, and should you try, be prepared to die”.

Some of the boat people are not prizes either: According to CNN, a boat with 105 people trying to get from Libya to Italy reported that Muslim passengers threw 12 passengers overboard because they were Christians. All 12 died. The remaining passengers said they avoided the same fate by forming a human chain and putting up a fierce fight.

Is this cavalier treatment of human life becoming the new normal? There has always been violence between clans and religions since prehistory. But when a refugee is on his/her way to (supposedly) a shot at a better life, why would a reflexive thought be; “kill the infidels”?

And why would the 28 member states of the European Union so willing to let “other” people die? Wotta world.

On to cartoons. It was a busy week for JEB!, Hillary and Rubio. And a gyrocopter dropped an info bomb about Citizens United on the Capitol:

The Park Police seized the mail the pilot was carrying, and why not? The letters were useless to Congress-critters — there was no money stuffed in the envelopes.

JEB! tries to explain checking the “Hispanic” box on his voter registration form:

Sen. Rubio explains his reasons for running:

But it looks like Hillary vs. Jeb, so everything old is new again:

Fortune Magazine says 42% of American workers make less than $15/hour. That means minimum wage workers will miss the boat:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 11, 2015

Big week. Another black man killed, Hillary announces to no one’s surprise, the anti-Iran deal resistance cranks it up a notch and a Cuban handshake for Mr. Obama.

Let’s start with the cop-involved killing in North Charleston SC. Two memes that appear every time a cop kills an unarmed black man are “one bad apple” and “the victim probably deserved it”. Let’s unpack this: The knee jerk response in some quarters is that since there are so many good cops, and so few bad ones, that the cops who kill merit the benefit of the doubt, particularly when the shooters say they were in fear for their lives. No need to look at a systemic problem in policing.

The second is the steady drip of “facts” that amount to character assassination of the already-dead victim. They had a record, they were late with family support payments, they resisted, or they made a sudden move. Or, a cascade of other facts that indicate the victims were no saints.

But, none of these things merit vigilante justice.

It’ll always be “one bad apple” but that bad apple will most often be a white cop killing a black man. It’ll always be “maybe the victim deserved it”, and it will most often be a black victim who deserved it.

Here is the value of video:

“Comply or die” is the state of the art in policing:

Republicans want Iran deal to go away. Obama too:

Chicken Hawks count noses on Iran:

Iran hears a familiar song and dance:

SS Hillary launches:

In 2008, Barack Obama wrapped up the delegates he needed to be the Democratic nominee at a shockingly early point in the campaign. Even a very strong finish by Hillary Clinton did nothing to improve her chances. She was finished before she knew what hit her.

She learned a huge lesson. This time, getting the nomination seems more inevitable, but she’s out of the gate early.

Given the lack of bench strength in the Democratic Party, it’s no wonder that the New Republic worries that she is a single point of failure for Dems.

What could go wrong?

Sen. Cotton Must Bone Up on Strategy

“Empires are lost when inadequate men become leaders and wage war for base reasons or no reason at all.” – Sun Tzu

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) Cotton accused President Obama of a “false choice” between his framework deal on Iran’s nuclear program and war. He then downplayed what would happen if we just bombed Iran: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

It would be something more along the lines of what President Clinton did in December 1998 during Operation Desert Fox. Several days of air and naval bombing against Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction facilities for exactly the same kind of behavior. For interfering with weapons inspectors and for disobeying Security Council resolutions. All we’re asking is that the president simply be as tough in the protection of America’s national security interest as Bill Clinton was.

Who cares what the generals, intelligence analysts and foreign policy experts think after war gaming various scenarios for a war with Iran? Hint: it’s not a pretty outcome.

But, for Sen. Cotton, the only opinion that really matters is Sen. Cotton’s, America’s new military strategist. Sen. Cotton was elected in part because of his prior military service, having served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He left the military in 2013. Sadly, not everyone who was in combat while serving is a strategic thinker. Given his military experience, he should know that geopolitics is not a Hollywood movie.

This guy has a romantic vision of how a “quick war” would proceed. He says it would be a few days of air and naval bombing against Iran’s nuclear facilities. He apparently thinks that Iran would not move against American shipping in the Gulf, against Israel, or even attempt to take out our military in the ME. And our allies? Who would support us, except Israel and Saudi Arabia? And once the party is over, and Iran dusts off and picks up the pieces, they would surely build nuclear weapons. Wouldn’t we then have to bomb them again?

Wouldn’t that make the US a pariah state?

This reminds us that Republicans, in their eagerness for war, often diminish the costs to America of pursuing the military option. Yep, only a four day war, and then we declare victory! Or, longer, and messier, and then what? Consider this:

• “We will be greeted as liberators”
• “Oil revenues will pay for it”
• “There is no insurgency”
• “The insurgency is in its last throes”

It was 12 years ago that pundits and politicians were touting how fast and cheaply we could turn Iraq into a model democracy. Well, the results are in, but they apparently haven’t registered for Sen. Cotton, who needs to come up with some new and better neo-con talking points.

The neo-cons, the hawks and their spokespersons, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, have rarely met an international issue that doesn’t require more American military muscle, and this includes Iran. Perhaps Sen. Cotton is auditioning to replace the decaying Sen. McCain or Sen. Graham in the permanent warmongering Senator chair on the Sunday talkies? He is much younger (38) and could conceivably remain on the national political stage for the next 40 years. Would Sunday Show status give him the credibility to run for POTUS like McCain did, and Graham is attempting to do now?

A strategy tip for Sen. Cotton: “Negotiating from a position of strength” doesn’t mean, “We should negotiate only after we have our boots on their necks”, so if they refuse to accept our terms, we crush them, claiming that they wouldn’t negotiate. He thinks that anything that prevents us from exercising the “boot on the neck” option means we’re in a position of weakness. That’s awful on a lot of levels.

How can a smart guy, a Harvard grad, a lawyer, someone with significant military service, get it so wrong when it comes to geopolitics and military strategy? He should know the difference between Iraq and Iran. In Iraq, we had already decimated their military, destroyed their air defense system and made their airspace into a no-fly zone before our 2003 attack. Iran, which despite crippling economic sanctions, still has its air defense systems, its anti-ship missiles, (which, some war games showed can cripple our fleet in the Persian Gulf) and its military is intact.

Iraq was fractured by sectarian division. It has about 31 million people and is 60% the size of Texas.

Iran is not Arab, it is Muslim, and unified. It has 80 million people and is twice the size of Texas.

Sen. Cotton needs to bone up on military strategy and the Middle East.

It’s Over Between Us, Israel

“Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien” – (The best is the enemy of the good) – Voltaire

Now that a Manhattan Supreme Court Justice is allowing a woman to serve her husband with divorce papers via Facebook, The Wrongologist wants to break up with Israel via his blog.

Wednesday’s NYT had an editorial about Israel’s newest demands regarding the proposed Iran negotiations by the P5+1 nations: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has gone into overdrive against a nuclear agreement with Iran. On Monday, his government made new demands that it claimed would ensure a better deal than the preliminary one…announced last week. [Israel’s] new demands…would not mean a better deal, but no deal at all.

Israel must accept that their objectives are qualitatively different than those of the UK, France, Germany, China, Russia and the US (P5+1) regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Based on Mr. Netanyahu’s rants, and the incessant punditry in the media and commentary (mostly by) Republican members of Congress, it seems that the US has just one ally, Israel, and that our goals in the ME are perfectly aligned. They are not.

The Iranian framework agreement has the potential to become a historic game-changer. As Robert Parry said: (Emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The April 2 framework agreement with Iran represents more than just a diplomatic deal to prevent nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. It marks a crossroad that offers a possible path for the American Republic to regain its footing and turn away from endless war.

Move away from endless war. Who would be against that? We are still a Satan to Iran, but maybe no longer the Great Satan, now, just a pretty bad Satan. When we think about Iran, we should think about how we have played both sides against the middle with Iran for decades:

• Iran holds our people hostage in 1979
• We enter Iran/Iraq war on Saddam’s side in 1982
• We sell Iran HAWK missiles in 1986 as part of the Iran-Contra debacle
• In 1988, we accidentally shoot down an Iranian civilian airliner, killing about 300. The US paid compensation, but never apologized or acknowledged wrongdoing
• Iran helps us hunt down Al-Qaeda personnel fleeing Afghanistan in 2002, after we sent the CIA in to flush them out
• We first sanctioned Iran in 1979, with the UN joining in, in 2006

Can this kind of inconsistent relationship lead to warm feelings? Maybe not, but should we sacrifice a possible game-changing initiative for Israel’s sake? More Americans are saying “no”. A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that:

• 31% of US Republicans favor the nuclear deal with Iran
• 30% of Republicans oppose the pact, while 40% are not sure
• 50% of Democrats supported it, while 39% were not sure
• Among independents – 33% voiced support, 21% were opposed, and 45% are unsure

And Israel itself is losing American political support. From David Atkins:

The number of Americans who view Israel as an ally of the US has sharply decreased, according to a new poll…Only 54% of Americans polled said that Israel is their country’s ally, a decline from 68% in 2014 and 74% in 2012. Rasmussen Reports, who conducted the poll, said Israel had “tumbled down the list.” By contrast, 86% and 84% see Canada and Britain respectfully as the US’s allies.

When broken down along party political lines, 76% of Republicans view Israel an ally of the US compared to only 45% of Democrats and 47% of Independents.

Given how politically divided the US has become, it’s not surprising that an Israel that aligns itself in a strongly partisan way with one US political party, while it finds itself losing support from citizens of the country it relies on most for aid and defense.

So, we have different objectives. Moreover, our relationship has largely one-sided. We defend and support Israel, but what do they provide in return? Well, they buy our weapons with our aid money. In fact, the special relationship has hurt us geopolitically. If Bibi’s administration thinks it’s a good idea to play partisan politics in the US, then the appropriate response of the US administration should be: “Good luck with your ME follies”.

And why the Israeli hysteria? Israel has several hundred nuclear weapons (assessments are 80-400). If Iran builds nuclear weapons, and then attempts to obliterate Israel, Israeli nuclear submarines will obliterate much of Iran. If the Iran nuclear deal fails, nuclear Israel and nuclear Iran will have to live in a Balance of Nuclear Terror, as does America, and many other countries. It’s not pleasant, but the rest of the nuclear club has been able to live with the existential menace.

If the US leaves the marriage with Israel and goes back to being simply their ally, Israel’s security will not be affected, since the US continues to make clear that we will defend them. But, we would finally be free to give clear voice to our own policies. For too long it has been the Israeli tail wagging the US dog when it comes to Middle East policy.

An Iran deal potentially opens the door to an eventual US withdrawal from its hugely expensive, and failed history in the Middle East. A completed deal would pave the way to shrink our war machine, one that has spilled much American blood and treasure in a region of the world where we have little business meddling.

So, Israel, the Wrongologist is changing his status with you to “its complicated”.

Monday Wake Up Call – April 6, 2015

Today’s Wake up is for the Republican Chicken Hawks who think that Iran is the Greatest Threat To America™. They are denouncing the possible nuclear Iranian deal because Bibi says, or because they think it takes the military option off the table, or they think that Iran got too good a deal, or all of the above.

Here, from the Atlantic, are some specific details from Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The table below summarizes the new framework accord and analyzes differences between where Iran stood before negotiations, and where it will be, if, or when, the accord becomes reality:

By eliminating 12,000 centrifuges and five bombs’ worth of low-enriched uranium, the accord extends the breakout timeline for Iran to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb to one year. By requiring the reconfiguration of Iran’s planned plutonium-producing reactor at Arak, the accord essentially closes the door to a plutonium-based Iran bomb. And by agreeing to establish a new mechanism that will allow unprecedented access for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to suspicious nuclear sites anywhere in Iran, the accord makes it much more difficult for Iran to cheat.

It’s time to ask critics of the proposed deal, particularly those running for president in 2016, exactly where they stand, and what they would do if an agreement is reached.

Wouldn’t you think after Iraq, the American people would want to debate this, and emphatically say that war with Iran is such a stupid idea that no one advocating it should get within a mile of the White House, the State Department, or the Pentagon? Everyone, (Republican chicken hawks included) should want to negotiate peace as our default position.

But, it has been a whole twelve years since we started a war, and given the history of the last few decades, we’re past due. So who’s the big, brave Republican running on an Iran war platform? Everybody.

Wake up Chicken Hawks. Here to help rouse you from your neo-con wet dream, a song by The Lone Bellow, a Brooklyn NY-based group with three-part harmonies and great melodies. This is “Then Came the Morning” from their 2nd Album of the same name. Here they are on WFUV, Fordham University radio:

Sample Lyrics:
Take my words, breathe them out like smoke
Burn every single letter that I wrote
Let the pages turn to ash, I don’t want them back
Everything you always said to me

Monday’s Hot Links:

Tesla made an April fool’s announcement and investors were pissed:

PALO ALTO, Calif., April 1, 2015 – Tesla today announced a whole new product line called the Model W. As many in the media predicted, it’s a watch. That’s what the “W” stands for.

In the following minute, the stock jumped $1.50. Nearly 400,000 shares traded in that time, and it was the heaviest one minute of trading volume in the stock since the first minute after the IPO on Feb 12. Sadly, there is no watch. People bought the stock because they were introducing a thing called the Model W. They didn’t read beyond the headline, and thought whatever it was, would be big. Invest wisely, grasshopper.

The next two links contrast a big business solution to a big problem, with an open-source solution to a big problem. The big business solution is elegant, expensive and patented. The entrepreneurial solution is elegant, cheap and free:

The latest technology for removing salt from seawater, is developed by Lockheed Martin, and will be a game-changer. Desalination technology is all over the world, but it is inefficient, using lots of energy to force salt water through a filtration system. That makes it expensive. Lockheed has developed a special filter that doesn’t need as much energy to push water through the filter. Its made out of Graphene. If this scales up, where do we put the excess salt? Or, if you really are thinking, If Lockheed can strain salt ions out of water, then why not gold ions? Invest at your own risk.

Ever hear of Liter of Light? They are a charity that makes a skylight-type light using a used liter plastic bottle, filled with water and a little bleach that is placed through tin roofs in the 3rd world. They then added an LED light and a 1 watt solar collector, for light at night. All of this started in the Philippines. Liter of Lights now has chapters in 53 countries, and has installed 350,000 daytime lights and around 15,000 night lights. Watch a video here. Please, you won’t regret it.

According to UNESCO, more than 1.5 billion people around the world currently have no access to electric light, and around 1.3 billion of them must spend up to half their income to light their homes at night. The fact that the technology is not patented, or owned by a large, multinational corporation, like Lockheed, who owns the Graphene filter, makes this a sweet place to send some of your excess money, Wrongsters. Do not expect a financial return.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Politics of Fear