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Saturday, December 3, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Corruption And Election Tricks Are Adding To The U.S.' Energy Troubles
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The Obama administration pulled off a rare trifecta this past week, demonstrating in three separate energy decisions how corruption and election manipulation are killing jobs and restricting the nation’s energy supply, but paying political dividends to our sitting president.
The first example of the administration putting its own political interests ahead of the interests of the nation occurred last Friday, when it announced that it would decline to make a decision on a proposed pipeline to carry oil from western Canada to refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast. The Keystone XL pipeline would put Americans to work building the pipeline, would create additional jobs along the Gulf Coast where the oil would be refined.
Predictably, environmental activist groups argued against the pipeline, asserting that we should be weaning ourselves off of oil rather than taking steps to make it more available and affordable. They also argued that the production of this particular oil, recovered from oil sands, imposed more environmental damage than oil produced from conventional deposits. China has nevertheless made it clear that if the United States chooses not to purchase the oil, it will, so a U.S. decision not to purchase the oil will do nothing to alleviate oil sands production, even if environmental activist claims against the process are to be believed.
After reviewing the proposal for several months, the Obama administration was scheduled to announce a decision this fall. Instead, the Administration announced last Friday it would wait until after the 2012 elections to decide.
All the facts have been studied and a decision is ripe for the making. So the question is, why the delay? The reason is obvious; a decision on the pipeline might hurt the president’s reelection campaign. Approve the pipeline and anger the president’s liberal base when he most needs its support. Scuttle the pipeline and Republicans have more ammunition to support their claims that the Obama administration is restricting energy supplies and killing jobs.
A major consequence of the Administration playing political games with the timing of its pipeline decision is that Canada could well decide not to wait around indefinitely for a fickle president to determine whether his personal political career is advanced by approving the pipeline. China will take the oil today and will be more than happy to sign a long-term contract for it. Friendship aside, the smart economic move is to secure a buyer when one can, and friendship only goes so far when billions of dollars of sales are at stake – especially when friendship appears to be only a one-way street right now as Obama unnecessarily leaves the Canadians hanging.
Moreover, the president’s political gamesmanship is keeping domestic oil prices high, and killing jobs. Even if the president announces a year from now that he will approve the pipeline (and even if the Canadians are still waiting around for our decision a year from now), the president will have needlessly prolonged unemployment. If approving the pipeline is the right thing to do, there is no reason other than political self-interest not to give the approval now.
The second example of the Obama administration putting its own political interests ahead of the interests of the nation came to light yesterday, when it was revealed that the Administration pressured Solyndra executives to delay layoffs that were planned for October 2010 until after the November 2010 midterm elections.
Solyndra was preparing to make necessary job cuts in light of its difficulty generating revenue. Rather than allow the company to immediately make a decision that would maximize its chances to eventually balance its books, Obama administration officials used their leverage to push Solyndra to delay necessary cost-saving measures. Delaying necessary cost-saving measures would harm the financial viability of the taxpayer supported company but would avoid an embarrassing news story for the president and his political allies on the eve of an election.
Solyndra indeed held off announcing its job cuts. On the morning after the 2010 midterm elections, Solyndra announced it would lay off 190 workers and close one of its factories. The Obama Energy Department rewarded it by thereafter giving the floundering company millions more taxpayer dollars even though its ultimate fate was by then readily apparent.
Again, as was the case with the Administration’s Keystone XL pipeline decision, the only reason for it to delay was for the president to gain a transitory political advantage. If layoffs needed to be made and a factory needed to be closed to improve the prospects of Solyndra’s survival, delaying such necessary action merely placed the company further at risk of going bankrupt. Despite the fact that these were taxpayer dollars with which the Obama administration was playing politics, it indeed chose to pressure Solyndra to delay implementing action that would have improved the chances of its survival.
Solyndra gave in to the Administration’s pressure and predictably went bankrupt soon thereafter. Solyndra executives will be bailed out in bankruptcy court (especially with taxpayer funded federal loan guarantees backing them up) and the Administration successfully avoided an embarrassing news story on the eve of the 2010 midterm elections. The only losers were the remaining 300 million Americans left on the financial hook for such corrupt political gamesmanship.
The third example of the Obama administration putting its own political interests ahead of the interests of the nation also came to light this week with advance excerpts of a book written by Peter Schweizer exposing how the Administration is abusing federal energy loan programs to pay off political donors. According to Schweizer, over 80 percent of the billions of dollars distributed under the federal stimulus 1705 Loan Program “went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party. The grant and guaranteed-loan recipients were early backers of Obama before he ran for president, people who continued to give to his campaigns and exclusively to the Democratic Party in the years leading up to 2008.”
“Indeed, at least 10 members of Obama’s finance committee and more than a dozen of his campaign bundlers were big winners in getting your money,” Schweizer added. “At the same time, several politicians who supported Obama managed to strike gold by launching alternative-energy companies and obtaining grants.”
Under normal circumstances there would be a hefty political price to pay for deliberately obstructing an economically necessary pipeline merely for personal political gain, pressuring a company to make financial decisions that make the company more likely to take hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars with it into bankruptcy, and using federal stimulus dollars to pay off political donors rather than maximize job creation. But government interfering with energy markets is now the rule rather than the exception, and where there is excess government power there is invariably government corruption. As our nation suffers an unnecessary and self-inflicted energy crisis, government corruption of the energy market has apparently become the “new normal.”
U. S. Government May Be Primary Suppliers of Mexican Drug Cartel Guns
With Operation Fast and Furious headlining the news, there is no doubt civilian arms have been trafficked into Mexico. However, many of the arms used by Mexican cartels are NOT supplied by civilian gun outlets in the United States. Based upon the statistics I have compiled, our State and Defense Departments may be the premier suppliers of weaponry to Mexican drug cartels — not the US civilian.
From 2003-2009, over 150,000 Mexican soldiers deserted from their ranks. Drug cartels became so confident in their recruitment of military personnel that they posted help wanted ads for hit men, traffickers, and guards. When these soldiers desert, their US-supplied weapons (grenades, sniper rifles, assault weapons, etc.) often accompany them over to the cartels. In 2008 and 2009, 13,792 and 20,530 small arms were exported to Mexico from the US. Over 92% of these arms were civilian legal semi-automatic or non-automatic firearms, a number eerily similar to the debunked 90% number echoed by the ATF. A 2008 State Department memo to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi shows a $1,000,000 shipment of select fire M4A2 assault rifles to the Mexican Federal Police Force, (AKA Federales) one of the most corrupt Mexican government agencies.
The most recent numbers from 2010 show the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) — the State Department agency responsible for overseeing the exportation of military goods — authorized the transfer of 2.5 million units of small arms, weapon optics, silencers, and related components. In that same year, over 11 million units of ammunition and 127,000 units of explosive ordnance were cleared for exportation to Mexico. This amounted to $25 million worth of small arms, ammunition, and explosives shipped to Mexico authorized by our State Department.
In recent months, allegations have surfaced that the State Department’s US Direct Commercial Sales Program and DDTC may have directly shipped arms to the Zetas, the Gulf Cartel’s hit squad. The Zetas were at one time trained and supplied with American weaponry by our own 7th Special Forces Group in the early 1990s. These claims against the State Department arose even after the DDTC recognized the Americas Region in 2009 as having the highest rate of unfavorable traces for their Blue Lantern Program. The Blue Lantern Program involves traces performed by the DDTC to ensure exported military weaponry does not end up with an unauthorized nation or organization. For the Americas, 80% of traces where unauthorized end users were identified involved small arms. Data specifically for Mexico was unavailable from the State Department.
From 2008 to 2009, when President Obama entered office, Defense Department expenditures to Mexico have increased from $12 million to $34,000,000 and State Department expenditures increased from $7.2 million to $356 million. While 2010 data is currently unavailable, it appears our foreign aid to Mexico has continued to increase for 2011. These statistics imply the State and Defense Departments may very well be the top suppliers of small arms to Mexico’s drug cartels and not civilians. Only the information obtained from ATF Firearms Traces will tell. However, those records are not public. After the DOJ and the White House knowingly pursued attempts at new gun control legislation, we are left to ask the question; is this just another case of government stupidity or is this something more premeditated?
Join the revolution
This is why I invite you to join the revolution in whatever constructive way you can. Now is the time to make your voice heard, just as all those protesting right now are doing.
My only bit of wisdom to pass along in this regard is to make sure it's your OWN voice and don't let yourself be played by some organized globalist agenda that now wants to hijack the protests for their own nefarious purposes.
The essence of freedom is LIBERTY, honest money, private property rights and a system of law that applies to everyone.
YES, the globalist bankers are crooks. They probably deserve to be strung up in a public square somewhere, but even such actions should never be taken without due process and a proper trial. What's really wrong with America today is that the criminal elements are running the show, from the White House to Wall Street. And it's time the People demanded that EVERYONE abide by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. After all, didn't the President swear to protect it when he became President? So why does he now selectively ignore it?
The revolution happening right now is a revolution borne out of frustration, and although it seems to lack focus in the mixed messages heard on the street right now, it will soon coalesce into a call for justice and an end to the systems of tyranny that dominate the American landscape today.
The transition out of freedom and justice will be fraught with violence, I fear, and there will soon be Martial Law declared across our land. Be prepared for what's coming, and have no illusions that the second American revolution is now at our doorstep. I only ask: What will you do with this opportunity? Will you stand for liberty and justice when it really counts?
My only bit of wisdom to pass along in this regard is to make sure it's your OWN voice and don't let yourself be played by some organized globalist agenda that now wants to hijack the protests for their own nefarious purposes.
The essence of freedom is LIBERTY, honest money, private property rights and a system of law that applies to everyone.
YES, the globalist bankers are crooks. They probably deserve to be strung up in a public square somewhere, but even such actions should never be taken without due process and a proper trial. What's really wrong with America today is that the criminal elements are running the show, from the White House to Wall Street. And it's time the People demanded that EVERYONE abide by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. After all, didn't the President swear to protect it when he became President? So why does he now selectively ignore it?
The revolution happening right now is a revolution borne out of frustration, and although it seems to lack focus in the mixed messages heard on the street right now, it will soon coalesce into a call for justice and an end to the systems of tyranny that dominate the American landscape today.
The transition out of freedom and justice will be fraught with violence, I fear, and there will soon be Martial Law declared across our land. Be prepared for what's coming, and have no illusions that the second American revolution is now at our doorstep. I only ask: What will you do with this opportunity? Will you stand for liberty and justice when it really counts?
The second American revolution has begun
There's a sense of desperation in America today. Their jobs are being exported out of the country, their health insurance is being dropped by employers, their dollars are becoming increasingly worthless with each passing day and their futures don't look very promising. They're angry, frustrated and desperate, so they take to the streets and protest. Occupy Wall Street! Occupy The Fed! Take to the streets!
It's the right thing to do, but what most protesters -- and nearly all Americans -- don't fully grasp is that nearly every powerful institution is a criminal racket. It's not just Wall Street that's operated like a criminal mob, folks: It's the U.S. Congress. It's the health care industry. It's conventional agriculture, the mainstream media, the processed food manufacturers, the government regulators and of course the entire military industrial complex.
Nearly everything around you is a criminal operation. The banks openly steal your homes while laundering money for global drug lords. The U.S. government runs illegal guns into Mexico while allowing cocaine and heroin back into the USA to be sold at pumped-up black market prices. The mainstream media broadcasts outright lies and complete fabrications as if they were fact. Much of modern medical "science" is complete quackery or fiction, funded by corporations for the purpose of expanding corporate power. The local water supply is intentionally contaminated with toxic poisons known as "fluoride," and the local food supply is tainted with other dangerous chemicals like aspartame, MSG and BPA.
Your local hospital is almost certainly involved in a medical racket that seeks to insert high-profit medical procedure charges onto patient bills, and your local nursing home most likely throws granny in the hospital for a few days in order to get triple billing from Medicare upon their return. Doctors prescribe antibiotics because they get kickbacks from the drug companies, and the medical journals are little more than science whores who have been bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical industry. And don't forget vaccines, which have become the pathway through which infectious disease is actually spread among the population using live viruses injected into innocent children (http://www.naturalnews.com/033447_I...).
Wake the heck up, people! Most of modern society is a giant con. Nearly every institution, every mega corporation, every government and nearly every politician or bureaucrat is really just a criminal mobster trying to steal your wealth or gain control over your actions and thoughts. Most institutions actually cause the very things they claim to be fighting against!
It's the right thing to do, but what most protesters -- and nearly all Americans -- don't fully grasp is that nearly every powerful institution is a criminal racket. It's not just Wall Street that's operated like a criminal mob, folks: It's the U.S. Congress. It's the health care industry. It's conventional agriculture, the mainstream media, the processed food manufacturers, the government regulators and of course the entire military industrial complex.
Nearly everything around you is a criminal operation. The banks openly steal your homes while laundering money for global drug lords. The U.S. government runs illegal guns into Mexico while allowing cocaine and heroin back into the USA to be sold at pumped-up black market prices. The mainstream media broadcasts outright lies and complete fabrications as if they were fact. Much of modern medical "science" is complete quackery or fiction, funded by corporations for the purpose of expanding corporate power. The local water supply is intentionally contaminated with toxic poisons known as "fluoride," and the local food supply is tainted with other dangerous chemicals like aspartame, MSG and BPA.
Your local hospital is almost certainly involved in a medical racket that seeks to insert high-profit medical procedure charges onto patient bills, and your local nursing home most likely throws granny in the hospital for a few days in order to get triple billing from Medicare upon their return. Doctors prescribe antibiotics because they get kickbacks from the drug companies, and the medical journals are little more than science whores who have been bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical industry. And don't forget vaccines, which have become the pathway through which infectious disease is actually spread among the population using live viruses injected into innocent children (http://www.naturalnews.com/033447_I...).
Wake the heck up, people! Most of modern society is a giant con. Nearly every institution, every mega corporation, every government and nearly every politician or bureaucrat is really just a criminal mobster trying to steal your wealth or gain control over your actions and thoughts. Most institutions actually cause the very things they claim to be fighting against!
Monday, November 21, 2011
The Next American Revolution
What is the Authority for Rebellion?
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson
(PUBLISHER'S WARNING: The following essay may cause heartburn and knee-jerk reactions, especially in those who are predisposed to "give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety." But as Benjamin Franklin concluded, they "deserve neither liberty nor safety." For such feeble souls, Samuel Adams advised, "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!" For those who are not cast among that faint-hearted lot, please read on.)
I receive hundreds of messages every day from Patriots across the nation. For the last three years, one thematic question has emerged with ever-increasing frequency. To paraphrase that question: "What is the authority to rebel against the central government?"
That question is most often asked by those who have taken their oath of allegiance to our Constitution, particularly active duty, reserve and veteran military personnel. Typical is this note from a disabled combat Patriot this week: "Please clarify for me when my solemn oath to 'support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign AND [his emphasis] domestic,' kicks in."
Such questions were once deemed too radical and discordant for consideration in civil discourse. However, as Rule of Law enshrined in our Constitution has been all but completely usurped by the rule of men through the Left's so-called living constitution, the frequency and tenor of questions about the future of Essential Liberty for our once-great Republic is propelling them into mainstream debate.
The unfortunate ascension of Barack Hussein Obama and his socialist cadres had a silver lining: It revitalized the spirit of American Patriotism in tens of millions of our countrymen. The imminent threat to Liberty posed by Democratic Socialism is the catalyst driving this great awakening and it is spreading.
To the question of the authority to rebel against government, we turn to the Constitution's guiding document, our Declaration of Independence. It clearly affirms the "unalienable rights" upon which our Constitution was instituted, and those rights supersede the authority of the Constitution itself as they are the inherent rights of man.
This authorizing language reads as follows: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..."
So, is it time for another American Revolution?
The answer to that question depends upon the answer to a more fundamental question: Is it too late to restore authority of our Constitution? Moreover, will the current dire circumstances result in a sunset or sunrise on Liberty?
In my enthusiastic analysis, the degraded state of the union presents a great opportunity for restoration of Rule of Law, and this sunrise on Liberty is already in progress under the broad heading of the Tea Party movement. Further, having been in close proximity to revolutions on foreign soil, I am intimately aware that restoration (or revolution without shots fired) is a far more desirable path than the violent one -- not that the latter must ever be excluded as an option.
But behind every sunrise is a sunset. As Ronald Reagan warned thirty years ago, when the "Reagan Revolution" temporarily restored our nation's course toward Liberty, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States when men were free."
Make no mistake; there are formidable obstacles to the restoration of Liberty. The most daunting of these impediments is complacency, the result of either a false sense of comfort, institutionalized ignorance or both. The votes of some 43 percent of Americans have already been co-opted Barack Obama socialist programs and policies. Nonetheless, I still believe that the ballot box is a viable alternative to the bullet box at this juncture. Every effort to work within what remains of our Constitution's framework to restore its Rule of Law, as outlined in The Patriot Declaration must be exhausted.
If the 2012 election cycle does not provide sufficient momentum toward the goal of restored Liberty, there are substantial measures of civil disobedience that can ratchet up the pressure -- measures which will find support among true conservatives in both the House and Senate.
Either way, we face a long, uphill battle. It has taken many years to degrade Rule of Law, and it will take many years to fully restore it.
As for timing, Obama has already dropped a debt bomb on our economy, the goal of which is to "fundamentally transform the United States of America." The greatest systemic risk to Liberty that this act of economic violence poses is the destruction of free enterprise by way of taxation, regulation and insurmountable debt. Accelerating the Left's effort to crush free enterprise, Obama and his Senate majority rejected the House's Balanced Budget Amendment as part of the recent "budget deal" to increase U.S. debt. The result: As of this date, our nation's total outstanding debt is now in excess of our total annual gross domestic product (economic output), for the first time since 1947. Then, most of the debt was associated with WWII. Now most of the debt is associated with socialist spending programs for which there is no constitutional authority.
It should, of course, be the highest aspiration of every Patriot to restore our Constitution's Rule of Law, a fundamental principle of which is the separation of economy and state. But is there still time, and are we sufficiently resolute?
Leading the forces arrayed against us are the statist extremists, the "useful idiots" on the Left who now vilify as "terrorists" those seeking to restore Rule of Law.
In a closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting this week hosted by Veep Joe Biden, Demo Rep. Mike Doyle said of the recent budget negotiations, "We have negotiated with terrorists. This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money." Biden, to his everlasting shame, concurred: "They have acted like terrorists."
Biden, Doyle, and the Kool-Aid-drinking legions of the Left are formidable. But history shows that Barack Obama's model for prosperity, is a blueprint for economic collapse, a model that is antithetical to prosperity and ultimately at odds with Liberty.
Patriots, we have an obligation to secure Liberty for our posterity, and in the words of John Adams, "Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives."
Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to James Madison dated January 30, 1787: "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. ... An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."
Today, Tea Party "terrorists" should expect no such accommodation, as "honest republican governors" are few and far between.
That same year, Jefferson famously wrote more pointedly to John Adams's son-in-law, William Smith, "God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. ... What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that the people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Short of the bullet box, it is my fervent prayer that on 6 November 2012, an unprecedented army of American Patriots will use the ballot box to further alter the course of our nation toward Liberty and Rule of Law.
That notwithstanding, American Patriots remain well aware of both the authority for rebellion and more importantly the obligation to overcome tyranny, as enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. There may come a time to fight, and our Founders wisely extended to us the means for rebellion. We also fully understand the cost outlined in its closing: "For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."
We do.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
let's get serious obama Legalize Marijuana, End The Budget Crisis
The government has several reasons to legalize marijuana now. The costs associated with marijuana for the government are huge. A study by Jeffery Miron, a professor at Harvard, said that legalizing marijuana would save the government $7.7 billion a year. Second, legalized marijuana would bring in a large amount of tax revenue. Miron estimated that it would bring in $6.2 billion if it were taxed at the rates of alcohol and tobacco. Next, many studies agree that marijuana is actually safer than alcohol and tobacco. It doesn’t really make sense for marijuana to be illegal while alcohol and tobacco are sitting on shelves in the store. Finally, the prohibition of alcohol should have taught us something. Making it illegal made it much less safe and only served to make organized crime rich. Illegal marijuana is making our government broke and drug dealers rich.
Budget Shortfalls
Right now many states including the one I live in, Tennessee, are having huge budget shortfalls due to the recession. These states have been forced to cut jobs and hours. Some states, like California, are in huge trouble. They are actually shutting down the government for 2 days a month right now to save money. That means less hours for the workers, and inconvenience for everyone in the state. Miron estimates that legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion dollars a year by reducing the enforcement and incarceration costs. Legalizing marijuana would allow us to use our police force in ways that are much more helpful to the general population than trying to put Michael Phelps in jail. This budget savings would allow many jobs to be saved around the country.
Increased Tax Revenues
If we were to legalize marijuana, we would add significant taxes to any purchase. The cost would be similar to the current cost, however, the profit would be going to the government in the form of tax revenue instead of to drug dealers. Miron put the estimate at around $6.2 billion dollars. Remember those budget problems I was talking about, this would be a nice windfall that could help save / create more even more jobs. Making marijuana legal would also reduce drug related crime and keep our youth doing legal work instead of being enticed by the huge amounts of money that is made selling drugs.
Marijuana is Safer than Alcohol and Tobacco
Medical experts say that marijuana use is generally safer and less addictive than other legal drugs.
“Is marijuana safer [than alcohol]? The short answer is ‘yes,’” said Dr. Mitch Earleywine, a University of Southern California psychologist who is the author of “Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence” and the just published “Mind-Altering Drugs: The Science of Subjective Experience.” The evidence is clear, he told DRCNet. “Cannabis has no lethal dose, so you can’t die from it. The impact on the brain structure for cannabis is nil, but there can be very serious brain function changes with alcohol abuse. Also, more dramatic liver functions are impaired with alcohol. Malnutrition, B-vitamin deficiency, and Korsakoff’s Disorder are all linked to alcohol, but not cannabis.”
I am certainly not advocating the use of marijuana. I don’t and have never used it. I also don’t drink or smoke. That isn’t the point. The point is that the health effects are similar or less than other legal drugs. It just doesn’t make sense for marijuana to be illegal while alcohol and tobacco are not.
Learn from History, Prohibition Failed
Prohibition was a very interesting social experiment in the United States. It made alcohol illegal. It did not however remove alcohol from America. What it did was make people drink things that were much worse for them. It also made organized crime a lot of money. Does this sound familiar? Marijuana is pretty easily found in the United States right now even though it is illegal, but who knows what else it contains. Drug dealers are getting rich and not paying taxes just like the organized crime did during Prohibition. We could help fix that with the fair tax, but it makes more sense to just take away their illegal income. We have to start learning from history. Prohibition of alcohol was a failure, prohibition of marijuana isn’t working very well either.
Legalize Marijuana, Solve the Budget Problem
Right now we are in a recession. Unemployment is higher than anyone would like it to be. President Obama just signed an almost $800 billion stimulus package into law trying save jobs. We should legalize marijuana and help out some of the many states that are currently having serious budget problems. It would certainly help a lot to have more money coming in and less going out.
Related: Want to Decrease Illegal Drug Use? Decriminalize it!
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
A Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History
CAIRO — As protesters in Tahrir Square faced off against pro-government forces, they drew a lesson from their counterparts in Tunisia: “Advice to the youth of Egypt: Put vinegar or onion under your scarf for tear gas.” Enlarge This Image
Ed Ou for The New York Times
Cairo, Feb. 3 After more than a week of unrest, anti-Mubarak protesters clashed with supporters of the president for control of Tahrir Square. When confronting the police, the protesters wore armor made of cardboard and Pepsi bottles.
The exchange on Facebook was part of a remarkable two-year collaboration that has given birth to a new force in the Arab world — a pan-Arab youth movement dedicated to spreading democracy in a region without it. Young Egyptian and Tunisian activists brainstormed on the use of technology to evade surveillance, commiserated about torture and traded practical tips on how to stand up to rubber bullets and organize barricades.
They fused their secular expertise in social networks with a discipline culled from religious movements and combined the energy of soccer fans with the sophistication of surgeons. Breaking free from older veterans of the Arab political opposition, they relied on tactics of nonviolent resistance channeled from an American scholar through a Serbian youth brigade — but also on marketing tactics borrowed from Silicon Valley.
As their swelling protests shook the Egyptian state, they were locked in a virtual tug of war with a leader with a very different vision — Gamal Mubarak, the son of President Hosni Mubarak, a wealthy investment banker and ruling-party power broker. Considered the heir apparent to his father until the youth revolt eliminated any thought of dynastic succession, the younger Mubarak pushed his father to hold on to power even after his top generals and the prime minister were urging an exit, according to American officials who tracked Hosni Mubarak’s final days.
The defiant tone of the president’s speech on Thursday, the officials said, was largely his son’s work.
“He was probably more strident than his father was,” said one American official, who characterized Gamal’s role as “sugarcoating what was for Mubarak a disastrous situation.” But the speech backfired, prompting Egypt’s military to force the president out and assert control of what they promise will be a transition to civilian government.
Now the young leaders are looking beyond Egypt. “Tunis is the force that pushed Egypt, but what Egypt did will be the force that will push the world,” said Walid Rachid, one of the members of the April 6 Youth Movement, which helped organize the Jan. 25 protests that set off the uprising. He spoke at a meeting on Sunday night where the members discussed sharing their experiences with similar youth movements in Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Iran.
“If a small group of people in every Arab country went out and persevered as we did, then that would be the end of all the regimes,” he said, joking that the next Arab summit might be “a coming-out party” for all the ascendant youth leaders.
Bloggers Lead the Way
The Egyptian revolt was years in the making. Ahmed Maher, a 30-year-old civil engineer and a leading organizer of the April 6 Youth Movement, first became engaged in a political movement known as Kefaya, or Enough, in about 2005. Mr. Maher and others organized their own brigade, Youth for Change. But they could not muster enough followers; arrests decimated their leadership ranks, and many of those left became mired in the timid, legally recognized opposition parties. “What destroyed the movement was the old parties,” said Mr. Maher, who has since been arrested four times.
By 2008, many of the young organizers had retreated to their computer keyboards and turned into bloggers, attempting to raise support for a wave of isolated labor strikes set off by government privatizations and runaway inflation.
After a strike that March in the city of Malhalla, Egypt, Mr. Maher and his friends called for a nationwide general strike for April 6. To promote it, they set up a Facebook group that became the nexus of their movement, which they were determined to keep independent from any of the established political groups. Bad weather turned the strike into a nonevent in most places, but in Malhalla a demonstration by the workers’ families led to a violent police crackdown — the first major labor confrontation in years.
Just a few months later, after a strike in the Tunisian city of Hawd el-Mongamy, a group of young online organizers followed the same model, setting up what became the Progressive Youth of Tunisia. The organizers in both countries began exchanging their experiences over Facebook. The Tunisians faced a more pervasive police state than the Egyptians, with less latitude for blogging or press freedom, but their trade unions were stronger and more independent. “We shared our experience with strikes and blogging,” Mr. Maher recalled.
For their part, Mr. Maher and his colleagues began reading about nonviolent struggles. They were especially drawn to a Serbian youth movement called Otpor, which had helped topple the dictator Slobodan Milosevic by drawing on the ideas of an American political thinker, Gene Sharp. The hallmark of Mr. Sharp’s work is well-tailored to Mr. Mubark’s Egypt: He argues that nonviolence is a singularly effective way to undermine police states that might cite violent resistance to justify repression in the name of stability.
The April 6 Youth Movement modeled its logo — a vaguely Soviet looking red and white clenched fist—after Otpor’s, and some of its members traveled to Serbia to meet with Otpor activists.
Another influence, several said, was a group of Egyptian expatriates in their 30s who set up an organization in Qatar called the Academy of Change, which promotes ideas drawn in part on Mr. Sharp’s work. One of the group’s organizers, Hisham Morsy, was arrested during the Cairo protests and remained in detention.
“The Academy of Change is sort of like Karl Marx, and we are like Lenin,” said Basem Fathy, another organizer who sometimes works with the April 6 Youth Movement and is also the project director at the Egyptian Democratic Academy, which receives grants from the United States and focuses on human rights and election-monitoring. During the protesters’ occupation of Tahrir Square, he said, he used his connections to raise about $5,100 from Egyptian businessmen to buy blankets and tents.
Moises Saman for The New York Times
Cairo, Feb. 11 Egyptians celebrated the announcement that President Mubarak was stepping down. “Eighty-five million people live in Egypt, and less than a 1,000 people died in this revolution — most of them killed by the police,” an organizer said.
Then, about a year ago, the growing Egyptian youth movement acquired a strategic ally, Wael Ghonim, a 31-year-old Google marketing executive. Like many others, he was introduced into the informal network of young organizers by the movement that came together around Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat who returned to Egypt a year ago to try to jump-start its moribund political opposition.
Mr. Ghonim had little experience in politics but an intense dislike for the abusive Egyptian police, the mainstay of the government’s power. He offered his business savvy to the cause. “I worked in marketing, and I knew that if you build a brand you can get people to trust the brand,” he said.
The result was a Facebook group Mr. Ghonim set up: We Are All Khalid Said, after a young Egyptian who was beaten to death by police. Mr. Ghonim — unknown to the public, but working closely with Mr. Maher of the April 6 Youth Movement and a contact from Mr. ElBaradei’s group — said that he used Mr. Said’s killing to educate Egyptians about democracy movements.
He filled the site with video clips and newspaper articles about police violence. He repeatedly hammered home a simple message: “This is your country; a government official is your employee who gets his salary from your tax money, and you have your rights.” He took special aim at the distortions of the official media, because when the people “distrust the media then you know you are not going to lose them,” he said.
He eventually attracted hundreds of thousands of users, building their allegiance through exercises in online democratic participation. When organizers planned a “day of silence” in the Cairo streets, for example, he polled users on what color shirts they should all wear — black or white. (When the revolt exploded, the Mubarak government detained him for 12 days in blindfolded isolation in a belated attempt to stop his work.)
After the Tunisian revolution on Jan. 14, the April 6 Youth Movement saw an opportunity to turn its little-noticed annual protest on Police Day — the Jan. 25 holiday that celebrates a police revolt that was suppressed by the British — into a much bigger event. Mr. Ghonim used the Facebook site to mobilize support. If at least 50,000 people committed to turn out that day, the site suggested, the protest could be held. More than 100,000 signed up.
“I have never seen a revolution that was preannounced before,” Mr. Ghonim said.
By then, the April 6 movement had teamed up with Mr. ElBaradei’s supporters, some liberal and leftist parties, and the youth wing of the Muslim Brotherhood to plaster Cairo with eye-catching modernist posters advertising their Tunisia-inspired Police Day protest. But their elders — even members of the Brotherhood who had long been portrayed as extremists by Mr. Mubarak and the West — shied away from taking to the streets.
Explaining that Police Day was supposed to honor the fight against British colonialism, Essem Erian, a Brotherhood leader, said, “On that day we should all be celebrating together.
“All these people are on Facebook, but do we know who they are?” he asked. “We cannot tie our parties and entities to a virtual world.”
‘This Was It’
When the 25th came, the coalition of young activists, almost all of them affluent, wanted to tap into the widespread frustration with the country’s autocracy, and also with the grinding poverty of Egyptian life. They started their day trying to rally poor people with complaints about pocketbook issues: “They are eating pigeon and chicken, but we eat beans every day.”
By the end of the day, when tens of thousands had marched to Tahrir Square, their chants had become more sweeping. “The people want to bring down the regime,” they shouted, a slogan that the organizers said they had read in signs and on Facebook pages from Tunisia. Mr. Maher of the April 6 Youth Movement said the organizers even debated storming Parliament and the state television building — classic revolutionary moves.
“When I looked around me and I saw all these unfamiliar faces in the protests, and they were more brave than us — I knew that this was it for the regime,” Mr. Maher said.
It was then that they began to rely on advice from Tunisia, Serbia and the Academy of Change, which had sent staff members to Cairo a week before to train the protest organizers. After the police used tear gas to break up the protest that Tuesday, the organizers came back better prepared for their next march on Friday, the 28th, the “Day of Rage.”
“We pulled out all the tricks of the game — the Pepsi, the onion, the vinegar,” said Mr. Maher, who wore cardboard and plastic bottles under his sweater, a bike helmet on his head and a barrel-top shield on his arm. “The strategy was the people who were injured would go to the back and other people would replace them,” he said. “We just kept rotating.” After more than five hours of battle, they had finally won — and burned down the empty headquarters of the ruling party on their way to occupy Tahrir Square.
Pressuring Mubarak
In Washington that day, President Obama turned up, unexpectedly, at a 3:30 p.m. Situation Room meeting of his “principals,” the key members of the national security team, where he displaced Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, from his seat at the head of the table.
The White House had been debating the likelihood of a domino effect since youth-driven revolts had toppled President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, even though the American intelligence community and Israel’s intelligence services had estimated that the risk to President Mubarak was low — less than 20 percent, some officials said.
According to senior officials who participated in Mr. Obama’s policy debates, the president took a different view. He made the point early on, a senior official said, that “this was a trend” that could spread to other authoritarian governments in the region, including in Iran. By the end of the 18-day uprising, by a White House count, there were 38 meetings with the president about Egypt. Mr. Obama said that this was a chance to create an alternative to “the Al Qaeda narrative” of Western interference.
American officials had seen no evidence of overtly anti-American or anti-Western sentiment. “When we saw people bringing their children to Tahrir Square, wanting to see history being made, we knew this was something different,” one official said.
On Jan. 28, the debate quickly turned to how to pressure Mr. Mubarak in private and in public — and whether Mr. Obama should appear on television urging change. Mr. Obama decided to call Mr. Mubarak, and several aides listened in on the line. Mr. Obama did not suggest that the 82-year-old leader step aside or transfer power. At this point, “the argument was that he really needed to do the reforms, and do them fast,” a senior official said. Mr. Mubarak resisted, saying the protests were about outside interference.
According to the official, Mr. Obama told him, “You have a large portion of your people who are not satisfied, and they won’t be until you make concrete political, social and economic reforms.”
The next day, the decision was made to send former Ambassador Frank G. Wisner to Cairo as an envoy. Mr. Obama began placing calls to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and other regional leaders.
The most difficult calls, officials said, were with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Mr. Netanyahu, who feared regional instability and urged the United States to stick with Mr. Mubarak. According to American officials, senior members of the government in Saudi Arabia argued that the United States should back Mr. Mubarak even if he used force against the demonstrators. By Feb. 1, when Mr. Mubarak broadcast a speech pledging that he would not run again and that elections would be held in September, Mr. Obama concluded that the Egyptian president still had not gotten the message.
Within an hour, Mr. Obama called Mr. Mubarak again in the toughest, and last, of their conversations. “He said if this transition process drags out for months, the protests will, too,” one of Mr. Obama’s aides said.
Mr. Mubarak told Mr. Obama that the protests would be over in a few days.
Mr. Obama ended the call, the official said, with these words: “I respect my elders. And you have been in politics for a very long time, Mr. President. But there are moments in history when just because things were the same way in the past doesn’t mean they will be that way in the future.”
The next day, heedless of Mr. Obama’s admonitions, Mr. Mubarak launched another attack against the protesters, many of whom had by then spent five nights camped out in Tahrir Square. By about 2:30 p.m., thousands of burly men loyal to Mr. Mubarak and armed with rocks, clubs and, eventually, improvised explosives had come crashing into the square.
The protesters — trying to stay true to the lessons they had learned from Gandhi, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gene Sharp — tried for a time to avoid retaliating. A row of men stood silent as rocks rained down on them. An older man told a younger one to put down his stick.
But by 3:30 p.m., the battle was joined. A rhythmic din of stones on metal rang out as the protesters beat street lamps and fences to rally their troops.
The Muslim Brotherhood, after sitting out the first day, had reversed itself, issuing an order for all able-bodied men to join the occupation of Tahrir Square. They now took the lead. As a secret, illegal organization, the Brotherhood was accustomed to operating in a disciplined hierarchy. The group’s members helped the protesters divide into teams to organize their defense, several organizers said. One team broke the pavement into rocks, while another ferried the rocks to makeshift barricades along their perimeter and the third defended the front.
Soldiers of the Egyptian military, evidently under orders to stay neutral, stood watching from behind the iron gates of the Egyptian Museum as the war of stone missiles and improvised bombs continued for 14 hours until about four in the morning.
Then, unable to break the protesters’ discipline or determination, the Mubarak forces resorted to guns, shooting 45 and killing 2, according to witnesses and doctors interviewed early that morning. The soldiers — perhaps following orders to prevent excessive bloodshed, perhaps acting on their own — finally intervened. They fired their machine guns into the ground and into the air, several witnesses said, scattering the Mubarak forces and leaving the protesters in unmolested control of the square, and by extension, the streets.
Once the military demonstrated it was unwilling to fire on its own citizens, the balance of power shifted. American officials urged the army to preserve its bond with the Egyptian people by sending top officers into the square to reassure the protesters, a step that further isolated Mr. Mubarak. But the Obama administration faltered in delivering its own message: Two days after the worst of the violence, Mr. Wisner publicly suggested that Mr. Mubarak had to be at the center of any change, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that any transition would take time. Other American officials suggested Mr. Mubarak might formally stay in office until his term ended next September. Then a four-day-long stalemate ensued, in which Mr. Mubarak refused to budge, and the protesters regained momentum.
On Thursday, Mr. Mubarak’s vice president, Omar Suleiman, was on the phone with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at 2 p.m. in Washington, the third time they had spoken in a week. The airwaves were filled with rumors that Mr. Mubarak was stepping down, and Mr. Suleiman told Mr. Biden that he was preparing to assume Mr. Mubarak’s powers. But as he spoke to Mr. Biden and other officials, Mr. Suleiman said that “certain powers” would remain with Mr. Mubarak, including the power to dissolve the Parliament and fire the cabinet. “The message from Suleiman was that he would be the de facto president,” one person involved in the call said.
But while Mr. Mubarak huddled with his son Gamal, the Obama administration was in the dark about how events would unfold, reduced to watching cable television to see what Mr. Mubarak would decide. What they heard on Thursday night was a drastically rewritten speech, delivered in the unbowed tone of the father of the country, with scarcely any mention of a presumably temporary “delegation” of his power.
It was that rambling, convoluted address that proved the final straw for the Egyptian military, now fairly certain that it would have Washington’s backing if it moved against Mr. Mubarak, American officials said. Mr. Mubarak’s generals ramped up the pressure that led him at last, without further comment, to relinquish his power.
“Eighty-five million people live in Egypt, and less than 1,000 people died in this revolution — most of them killed by the police,” said Mr. Ghonim, the Google executive. “It shows how civilized the Egyptian people are.” He added, “Now our nightmare is over. Now it is time to dream.”
Multimedia
Related
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Egyptian Military Dissolves Parliament (February 14, 2011)
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Tunisians Turn to Everyday Matters (February 14, 2011)
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Yemeni Youth Square Off With Forces (February 14, 2011)
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Iranian Leaders Vow to Crush March (February 14, 2011)
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Egypt Erupts in Jubilation as Mubarak Steps Down (February 12, 2011)
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Tunisia Leader Flees and Prime Minister Claims Power (January 15, 2011)
Related in Opinion
Cohen: From 9/11 to 2/11 (Feb. 14, 2011)
Video: Tahrir Square, a Forum for All (Feb. 14, 2011)
Readers' Comments
Egypt
Hosni Mubarak's 30 year regime has ended and power has been handed over to the military. The new rulers say that their rule is temporary and will only last until democratic elections are held - but civil rights groups have say that protesters have been detained and tortured by the army.
Transcript
HEATHER EWART, PRESENTER: Now to Egypt's tentative new dawn. After 18 days of pro-democracy demonstrations, President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year regime is over, leaving the military in charge. The generals say their rule is temporary and will only last until democratic elections are held, which could be as soon as six months away.But with civil rights groups claiming scores of protesters have been detained by the Army and some are being tortured, the question now is whether the military will keep their word. The ABC's Middle East correspondent Ben Knight reports from Cairo.
BEN KNIGHT, REPORTER: The most important thing to know about the Egyptian Army is that apart from being the biggest military force in the Middle East, it's also Egypt's biggest and richest business conglomerate.
Behind the tanks and the guns, it has massive interests in manufacturing, agriculture and real estate. It owns resort hotels and factories that make everything from cars to dishwashers to olive oil.
Some estimates say it makes up more than 10 per cent of the country's economy.
And if these soldiers rise high enough in the ranks, they know they'll be rewarded for their loyalty with a healthy slice of the action.
The military has been the power behind the throne for 60 years.
TARIQ OSMAN, AUTHOR, 'EGYPT ON THE BRINK': People say the regime has fallen. I argue the President has fell; the regime has not. Because the regime that has ruled Egypt for the past 60 years is still, or has been, the military establishment, which continues to control the situation today in Egypt. So effectively the structure's the same.
BEN KNIGHT: And it has the most to lose if Egypt moves to a democratic system of government. So why is it that the Egyptian people are so prepared to let the Army take over their revolution, and why do they trust them to keep their promises? Well, not everyone does.
MOHAMMED SIRAGH: The people lost some confidence in the Army, especially since Wednesday and Thursday when the lynch mob - basically the doors were open for the lynch mob to come and attack the people here in Tahrir (inaudible) and they continued supporting the President until now.
BEN KNIGHT: Mohammed Siragh was helping his fellow protesters clean up Tahrir Square on the weekend, but unlike most of them, he's not planning on leaving just yet.
MOHAMMED SIRAGH: So we wanna see the process beginning so that we have tranquillity in our hearts, that we can leave (inaudible). Everyone knows that if anything goes wrong or if they try to do any snake work, we're gonna come right back.
BEN KNIGHT: It's hard to overstate just how popular the Army is in Egypt. Most importantly, it's never turned its guns on the people, and in the Middle East, that's a proud claim to make. Egyptians have long felt that if their government ever turned on them, it would be the Army that saves them. So when the police disappeared from the streets in January and the Army arrived, they were welcomed as heroes.
These are the real men, the biggest sacrifices. The heroes.
BEN KNIGHT: Some individual soldiers even joined the protests. But the beginning of the end for Hosni Mubarak was when the Army commanders publicly supported the people's demands and promised not to fire on them. Now, it's over, and long-time democracy activists like Hisham Kassem still can't quite believe it's happened.
HISHAM KASSEM: I'm still absorbing it. I still am. I choke sometimes when I think about it. Amazing. I've always worked hard for this, but today, for the first time in my life, I'm proud to be Egyptian. I really am. I love the way we did it. Peaceful.
BEN KNIGHT: Hisham Kassem was the publisher of Egypt's largest daily newspaper until 2006, but for 20 the years he's been one of the few vocal opponents of the Mubarak regime. So, does he trust the Army to keep its word?
HISHAM KASSEM: I do, yes. The only other option is bloodshed. If the military try and stay in power, you know, as a de facto governing council, my forecast or my analysis, definitely not. It's too much, it's not something anybody can handle, you see? It just won't pass by. Egypt has changed after January 25.
BEN KNIGHT: But the Army's leadership has not. Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi is 80 years old, and as head of the Army, he also chairs the military council that will now rule Egypt until it holds democratic elections. Again, he seems an unlikely choice. Leaked cables have described him as Mubarak's poodle, resistant to change and without the energy or world view to do anything other than maintain the status quo.
Yet four times in the past week, he's promised the Egyptian people that all of their demands will be met and on time.
Tariq Osman believes the Army will simply be unable to go against the momentum for change.
TARIQ OSMAN: It is supported by tens of millions in the massive block, demographic block of the Egyptian middle class; a clash, even if it's only psychological clash between the military and these aspirations of the millions of the middle class, in my view is unlikely.
BEN KNIGHT: Egyptians might seem comfortable with the huge change they're about to undertake, but some of their neighbours are not. In Israel, the talk has all been about what happens when the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood becomes the next ruling party of Egypt.
HISHAM KASSEM: I can't tell you how much time I spent explaining, OK?, to different American administrations, diplomats, etc. that that is not the case, that the Brotherhood have been trying to get to power for 82 years and they have failed. That they are there because Mubarak is preventing people like me from going out on the streets, OK? That they're working through mosques. Mubarak was not able to close mosques so that became the clear, visible opposition of Mubarak.
BEN KNIGHT: But he says Israel can stop worrying that its peace treaty with Egypt is about to be torn up.
HISHAM KASSEM: We will prove to the world, OK?, that this is not a radically Islamic country, that we refuse to be identified politically as Muslims, OK? This is our religion, not our political affiliation. And, um, ah, I guess that's the only way we're going to defuse that fear.
BEN KNIGHT: But for Egyptians like Mohammed Siragh, the focus will be much closer to home.
MOHAMMED SIRAGH: And so we wanna make sure that the corruption is not going to seep back in and destroy what we've done so far. So we wanna maintain our strength and momentum to make sure that nothing will seep through the cracks.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
The Protests
Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world, erupted in mass protests on Jan. 25, 2011, as the revolution in Tunisia earlier in the month seemed to inflame decades worth of smoldering grievances against decades of heavy-handed rule by President Hosni Mubarak. After a week of mass protests, Mr. Mubarak said he would not seek reelection but refused to step down. His government has appeared to be trying to wait the protesters out, offering a reform plan that consists of minor concessions. But the protesters, having beaten back an attempt by armed pro-government supporters to drive them from Cairo's Tahrir Square, managed to keep the movement's momentum going. On Feb. 10, the armed forces signaled they would intervene "to protect the nation,'' but in an address that night Mr. Mubarak appeared to cling to office, saying he would remain while reforms were undertaken during the remainder of his term. More than 300 people are estimated to have died in Egypt since the turmoil began, according to human rights groups.
Feb. 10
- Egypt's armed forces said they had begun to take measures to "protect the nation,'' creating a supreme military council. But in a late-night address to the nation, Mr. Mubarak unexpectedly refused to budge, saying he would stay on through the end of his term.
- Labor strikes and worker protests flared across Egypt, affecting post offices, textile factories and even the government’s flagship newspaper, providing a burst of momentum to protesters, even as the government pushed back with greater force against their demands.
- Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit dismissed calls by Egyptian protesters and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scrap the country’s emergency laws, which allow the authorities to detain people without charges.
Feb. 9
- Inspired in part by the emotional televised interview with Wael Ghonim, the largest crowd of protesters in two weeks occupied Tahrir Square, surrounded the Egyptian Parliament and staged sporadic demonstrations and strikes in several Egyptian cities.
- Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have pressed the United States not to throw its weight behind the democracy movement in a way that could further destabilize the region, diplomats said.
Feb. 8
- As the authorities and protesters struggle to grasp the see-sawing initiative in the 15-day-old revolt, the government unveiled new pledges of reform, but demonstrators gathered in ever greater numbers to reject anything less than the president’s immediate ouster.
- In a live television interview after his release from an Egyptian prison, the Google executive Wael Ghonim acknowledged that he was one of the people behind the anonymous Facebook and YouTube campaign that helped galvanize the protest that has shaken Egypt for the last two weeks.
Slide Show: Young Egyptians Spread Their Message
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Mubarak must leave !!!
Friday, February 4, 2011
After supporting him with money and weapons for 30 years, the United States and all democracies must insist that Hosni Mubarak heed the voices of his young citizens who call for him to step down immediately and spare Egypt further bloodshed and economic loss.
The young Egyptians who have dug their heels deep into Cairo's Tahrir Square were born during Mubarak's three decades in power. They have known no other president and face a bleak future under his corrupt rule. Inspired by recent events in Tunisia, they finally took to the streets to seek change. Though Mubarak vowed this week to finally step down in September, few believe him, and with good reason: He has reneged on every election promise for political reform made since coming to power in 1981. Only hours after offering this "concession," Mubarak unleashed thugs and provocateurs on unarmed protesters amassed in Tahrir Square. At least five demonstrators were killed and hundreds injured. This followed reports that convicts have been released or escaped from prison, adding to the insecurity and violence on the streets of Cairo.
A president who would condone these crimes against his people and deny all cellphone and Internet access across the country has lost any semblance of credibility. For the vast majority of Egyptians, this is simply the last straw. When Mubarak became president after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, he vowed to serve only one six-year term. But he has ruled under a "state of emergency" since those chaotic days. Emergency laws enabled him to suspend the rule of law and bypass Egypt's esteemed judiciary. He has systematically eliminated, harassed or defamed any potential alternative to his leadership. He has rigged elections, silenced dissidents and prohibited even small political rallies. He has beaten and jailed democracy activists and sent civilians to military courts. He tightly controls the media and has cracked down hard on young bloggers. (I was tried and convicted in absentia on charges of "defaming Egypt's reputation" for writing on this page in 2007 in support of democratic change.)
Mubarak has continued Sadat's economic liberalization to an open-market economy, but much of the benefits of growth have been skewed toward a narrow group of elites. Corruption around the president's family is legendary and on par with that which toppled Tunisia's Ben Ali ruling family. Meanwhile, roughly a fifth of the Egyptian people live in poverty, and the once-vibrant middle class cannot afford a decent education or the skyrocketing costs of housing, or find jobs.
Mubarak claims he is proud of his record of service and vows to "die on the soil of Egypt." He will allow the country to descend into chaos rather than leave and allow us to rebuild our land. As I write, my wife is reporting sounds of gunfire from several districts in Cairo. We propose a solution to this impasse: In return for Mubarak resigning from the presidency immediately, the United Nations and Western powers could ensure him and his family safe passage to the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, where he spends most of his time anyway. He could avoid prosecution by agreeing to return the wealth his family has amassed during its years in power.
According to the Egyptian constitution, the recently appointed vice president would become the interim president until scheduled elections in September. The prime minister has vowed to find and prosecute those responsible for violent attacks of the past 48 hours. He should be supported in restoring law and order and getting the economy back on its feet. He must rapidly bring the brave young protesters into a broad-based national dialogue, along with members of opposition groups, the media, clean elements within the business community and civil society leaders.
With concerted efforts among the reform elements in Egypt and leaders of Western democracies, this scenario could be the way out from today's perilous situation. Egypt's instability threatens peace and stability across the region. Barack Obama and his European counterparts face a moment of truth: They can move rapidly to support the democracy activists who are putting their lives on the line in Tahrir Square, or history may never pardon them.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
What The "Do Nothing" Obama Has Accomplished That We Choose To Ignore Or Fail To Acknowledge
There is a rising chorus of impatient progressive bloggers, some on these pages, calling Obama a failure and a do-nothing president only nine months into his first of four years as president. SNL's "do-nothing skit" on Obama may well have empowered some on our side to start playing on the fringes of the Limbaugh sandbox. While the charges and name-calling are not as vicious as the Limbaugh Lemmings, it has started nonetheless.
So what has our newly-minted asshole president been doing for nine months?
Let's start with what he has not done. He has not found a cure for cancer, reversed climate change, ended poverty, brought peace to the Middle East, ended all wars, created enough new jobs, or created a single-payer healthcare system. These are big ticket items that no president will ever accomplish, so it is a little disingenuous to suggest a standard for Obama that does not apply to all past presidents or to future presidents. As Princeton economics professor Alan Blinder says in assessing what Obama has accomplished so far, "If he seems to have achieved little, it's partly because he set out to do too much." To which I would add, and we created an unrealistic agenda for what we wanted him to accomplish.
Let's continue with what he has done. First and foremost, none other than the Wall Street Journal, in an assessment titled, "Democrats Quiet Changes Pile Up", says he has accomplished more in nine months than George Bush did in his first nine months.
Let's be specific:
1. Significantly, he buried the Imperial Presidency of George Bush and restored the Constitutional balance of government by respecting the equal standing of the legislative branch of government. As a former constitutional law professor, this is a major matter of change of tone and style that he promised during the campaign, and he has delivered. (Not pretty or necessarily effective given the Reid-less leadership in the Senate, but we are a constitutional democracy.)
2. Passed and signed the stimulus package, the biggest piece of legislation--ever--in blinding speed, thus being able to start to stabilize the economy, with GDP now projected to grow at the rate of 3 percent by the end of the year. Check the comeback of your 401K since Obama has taken over.
3. Stabilized the top 20 banks without federalizing them.
4. Reduced the rate of foreclosures inherited from the Bush administration.
5. Signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that makes it easier to sue for wage discrimination, a dramatic reversal of the bill's fortunes under Bush.
6. Granted regulatory power to the FDA to control tobacco products, another dramatic reversal of the Bush years that industry has lobbied hard to prevent.
7. Signed the Matthew Shepard Hate Act that expanded federal hate crime protection to categories of sexual orientation and gender, to the major consternation of the Religious Right.
8. Killed the F-22 fighter jet program, a popular program with Congress, saving billions of dollars.
9. With a stroke of a pen, enacted, by executive order, (see correction below in comments, it was a bill signing) the largest conservation measure in 15 years, spanning the Bush and Clinton records.
10. Implement an electronic medical record system before any healthcare legislation was introduced. This new technology will be singularly responsible for saving lives and reducing the high administrative costs of healthcare, a key element of reform.
11. Extended a $2500 tax credit to 5 million families to help with college tuition.
12. Cooperated with Japan in bringing a $5 billion stabilization package for Pakistan.
13. Engaged the Muslim world in a dialogue, beginning with his unprecedented speech in Cairo, followed by an interview with Al Arabiya, and face-to-face discussions with Iran, a total reversal of the Bush years of Muslim baiting and hate.
14. Dramatically reversed the reputation of the United States around the world, with now most nations looking favorably on the US, and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize as one consequence.
15. Agreed to plan for bringing the troops home from Iraq, at a slower pace than what he promised, but based on knowledge that commanders-in-chief, not candidates, have.
16. Brought the White House online, doing for the White House what he had done for political campaigning. There are now online Q&A's with the administration, and a White House blog.
17. Released the names of all visitors to the White House, a total reversal of the secret Bush years.
18. Told Mexico that the US is responsible for some of their drug problems, a no small, but truthful admission.
19. Restored the rights of states to regulate the medical use of marijuana without fear of federal law enforcement intrusion.
20. Banned the use of torture, and he has begun a complete review of the torture policies under Bush.
21. Appointed the first Latina to the Supremes: Imagine what would have happened to the Supreme Court under four more years of radical Republicans. Obama has thus averted a long-term dramatic swing to the extreme right on the court, and appointed a progressive to keep matters in check.
In summary, and to those on these pages and elsewhere who see things differently, I say this feels a little like Waiting for Godot. Let's recall one thing that Samuel Beckett said in the mischievous play:
"The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased."
Why We Should Care
The Covert Kingdom -- Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Texas
But until progressives come to understand what [fundamentalists] read, hear, are told and deeply believe, we cannot understand American politics, much less be effective. Given fundamentalist Christianity's inherent cultural isolation, it is nearly impossible for most enlightened Americans to imagine, in honest human terms, what fundamentalist Americans believe, let alone understand why we should all care.
But until progressives come to understand what [fundamentalists] read, hear, are told and deeply believe, we cannot understand American politics, much less be effective. Given fundamentalist Christianity's inherent cultural isolation, it is nearly impossible for most enlightened Americans to imagine, in honest human terms, what fundamentalist Americans believe, let alone understand why we should all care.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Estimate of Political Strength
The best way to estimate the strength of the theocratic right is to go to their organizations and see how they rate our legislators. To view how Christian Coalition rates the U.S. Congress, click here; the Eagle Forum, click here. To view the scorecards of the most powerful organization of the theocratic right, the Family Research Council, click here.
The magazine Campaigns and Elections has published two studies 
The color-coded maps to the right demonstrate a shift from the year 1994 (top) to the year 2000 (bottom). Red is strong, green moderate, and yellow weak. The study's conclusion:
"In 2000, Christian conservatives were perceived to hold a strong position in 18 state Republican parties, the same number as in the 1994. The moderate category had 26 states, exactly twice the 1994 number. And the weak category declined to seven cases, down from 20 six years prior. Clearly, the biggest change was the increase in the moderate category, but there was considerable movement in all categories."
This link provides the chart by states produced by the above study.
The Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act, a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 107th Congress, was intended to bypass campaign finance reform and allow houses of worship to collect money for political campaigns. It was drafted with help the American Center for Law and Justice, a law school founded by Pat Robertson. These contributions would have been both anonymous and tax exempt. This bill was lobbied for intensively by virtually all the key organizations of the theocratic right, and opposed by a strong coalition of mainline religious groups. It was defeated in the House of Representatives on October 3, 2002, thereby denying unrestricted campaign contributions to be made through the collection plate.
Because most groups except the theocratic Right opposed the bill, it was a good measure of their numbers in the House in 2002. Roughly 43% of those who voted supported the bill (178 for, 239 against). Candidates backed by the theocratic Right won 18 new seats in the House of Representatives in 2002. The bill was re-introduced in January, 2003. It is in the House Ways and Means Committee with 160 sponsors.
From Church and State, February, 2004:
The North Carolina congressman has been successful at garnering more support for the new bill, which like its predecessor was written with the help of ACLJ attorneys. The measure, which is pending in the House Committee on Ways and Means, has more than 160 cosponsors, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). Legislative staff at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, as well as other public interest groups, believe the bill is gaining momentum and that its chances for being approved by the House are greater each day.
The Hostettler bill, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on July 23, 2004, indicates the strength of the religious right. While media attention focused on the two-ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments placed in the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court by its Chief Justice Roy Moore, little, if any attention was focused on a House measure that passed by a vote of 260 - 161. The Hostettler bill blocks the federal government from spending any tax funds to enforce the 11th U.S. circuit Court of Appeals order to have the monument removed. During floor debate, the author of the bill insisted that Congress has the power to curb the courts. This bill is an assault on an independent judiciary.
From Church and State on the Hostettler bill:
One Alabama newspaper blasted the amendment. Calling the move "outrageous and wholly unconstitutional," The Tuscaloosa News editorialized July 30, "While the amendment can and certainly should be stripped from the bill in the Senate, Hostettler's move shows that the same kind of blatant disregard of the law that Moore is trading in back here in Alabama is also current in Washington. That his ploy is not likely to stand does not make it any less outrageous."
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