Obsidian Wings

WTF??

by hilzoy

From Ha'Aretz (h/t TPM)

"The United States demanded that Israel desist from even exploratory contacts with Syria, of the sort that would test whether Damascus is serious in its declared intentions to hold peace talks with Israel.

In meetings with Israeli officials recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was forceful in expressing Washington's view on the matter.

The American argument is that even "exploratory talks" would be considered a prize in Damascus, whose policy and actions continue to undermine Lebanon's sovereignty and the functioning of its government, while it also continues to stir unrest in Iraq, to the detriment of the U.S. presence there. (...)

According to senior Israeli officials, the American position vis-a-vis Syria, as it was expressed by the secretary of state, reflects a hardening of attitudes.

When Israeli officials asked Secretary Rice about the possibility of exploring the seriousness of Syria in its calls for peace talks, her response was unequivocal: Don't even think about it."

About six weeks ago, word first surfaced of a set of earlier, unofficial negotiations between Israel and Syria, which had resulted in a draft agreement between the two countries. The agreement provides for an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, most of which would then be turned into a park accessible (without visas) to both Syrians and Israelis. (Personally, I think this is a very imaginative solution.) It also provides for demilitarization of the border, Israeli control of water rights from the Sea of Galilee and the upper Jordan, and verification. Moreover:

"According to Geoffrey Aronson, an American from the Washington-based Foundation for Middle East Peace, who was involved in the talks, an agreement under American auspices would call for Syria to ensure that Hezbollah would limit itself to being solely a political party.

He also told Haaretz that Khaled Meshal, Hamas' political bureau chief, based in Damascus, would have to leave the Syrian capital.

Syria would also exercise its influence for a solution to the conflict in Iraq, through an agreement between Shi'a leader Muqtada Sadr and the Sunni leadership, and in addition, it would contribute to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the refugee problem."

It goes without saying that there are always reasons to be skeptical of such things, and that even if all parties are negotiating in complete good faith, lots of things can go wrong between an initial round of unofficial talks and a final peace treaty. That said:

What could we possibly have been thinking?

Vilsack Out

by hilzoy

From the Des Moines Register:

"Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack plans to withdraw from the 2008 presidential campaign today, Democratic sources in Iowa said.

Vilsack planned to hold a news conference at 11 a.m. to make what campaign "major campaign announcement," aides to the candidate said.

Vilsack had said he would win the leadoff Iowa caucuses. He had been trailing three better-known candidates in the state, according to early polls. (...)

Vilsack, who announced his candidacy in November, continued to rank at the bottom of national polls, registering support from about 1 percent in most national surveys of Democratic presidential preference.

However, sources said the deciding factor was that Vilsack's challenge to raise the estimated $20 million to compete through the early nominating contests, including the Iowa caucuses, was becoming too difficult."

As I wrote a couple of days ago, I think that Vilsack's idea of price-indexing Social Security is a very bad one. Until he said that, however, I thought he was a good candidate in an incredibly strong Democratic field. In any normal year -- which is to say, in any year in which Barack Obama wasn't in the race -- I would be frantically researching Vilsack, Dodd, Edwards, and Richardson, trying to decide which to support. I was impressed by his commitment to energy independence and clean fuel, and also by him as a person.

His withdrawing only makes me think better of him. He might have been a serious contender if Obama hadn't entered the race: there would have been a substantial pool of Democrats who did not support Hillary, and who were looking for other candidates, and he would have been an attractive one. But Obama did enter the race, which altered that situation completely. I don't imagine that fundraising is any fun under these conditions. Some candidates might stay in regardless, and some of their reasons might be good ones. (Chris Dodd, for instance, seems to me to be having a lot of fun running for President, and he brings attention to important issues, like the Military Commissions Act.) But in general, I think that it speaks well of candidates when they actually do drop out once they realize they are unlikely to win. I was not particularly happy to see about half of every Democratic debate in 2004 taken up by questions to vanity candidates, and I don't anticipate liking it any more this year. (That means you, Dennis Kucinich.)

I wish him well.

(As Ezra notes, this does throw Iowa into play in a major way. I would add: it probably also frees up a lot of political operatives who know how to work the arcana of Iowa caucuses. It will be interesting to see where they end up.)

Once Bitten, Twice Shy (Baby)

by publius

Turning back to the whole “should military force be on the table” debate, the Post today provides yet another reason why we would benefit from taking force off the table -- namely, our saber-rattling is making international cooperation on Iran far more difficult.

Russia, China and several European countries have become increasingly uncomfortable with the Bush administration's positions on Iran as tensions between Tehran and Washington have risen in recent months.

. . .

Those concerns have prompted renewed calls for direct dialogue with Iran. German, Swiss, Russian, Chinese, Saudi and IAEA officials have all reached out to Iran in recent weeks in the hopes of restarting talks even if Iran continues to defy the Security Council.

The article doesn’t come out and say it directly, but if the other nations view our efforts simply as a prelude to a military strike, then they’re not going to cooperate with those efforts. Maybe they wouldn’t cooperate anyway, but I think our allies would at least be more willing to do so if they thought we were serious about the UN process for reasons other than creating pretexts for war. Remember that they’re viewing all this through the lens of the UN’s Iraq debate. There, the administration engaged the UN only to seek cover for a war it had already decided to conduct. It was never under any circumstances going to pull back from war, and it didn’t really care what the UN thought. And the UN members, understandably, don’t want to play that game again. Once bitten and all that.

But again, the larger point is that the threat of military force is simply counterproductive to our interests with respect to Iran right now.

Civics Lesson

by hilzoy

One of the things I love about blogging is that I end up learning all these wonderfully arcane things. For instance: I had never previously heard of Senate Organizing Resolutions. If one had sat down next to me on a bus, I wouldn't have known what it was. And yet all this time Senate Organizing Resolutions have been sitting around, confident of their own importance, not having to trumpet it to anyone, while most of us were unaware of their very existence. Kind of like missile silos, or septic drains. But look how important they are:

"With Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) publicly stating he'd consider becoming a Republican if Democrats block new funding for the Iraq War, many Democrats worry that control of the Senate hangs in the balance. However, their fears are unfounded. Many think back to 2001 when former Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-VT) began caucusing with Democrats instead of Republicans, taking control of the Senate out of GOP hands. However, the two situations - though outwardly similar - contain one important difference.

If Lieberman were to caucus with the Republicans, they would still not take full control of the Senate, despite Vice President Dick Cheney's ability to break 50-50 ties. This is because of a little-known Senate organizing resolution, passed in January, which gives Democrats control of the Senate and committee chairmanships until the beginning of the 111th Congress.

What's the difference between now and 2001? A small but important distinction. When the 107th Congress was convened on January 3, 2001, Al Gore was still the Vice President and would be for another two-and-a-half weeks. Therefore, because of the Senate's 50-50 tie, Democrats had nominal control of the chamber when the organizing resolution came to a vote. With Dick Cheney soon to come in, however, Democrats allowed Republicans to control the Senate in return for a provision on the organizing resolution that allowed for a reorganization of the chamber if any member should switch parties, which Jeffords did five months later. There was no such clause in the current Senate's organizing resolution."

Here's a longer history, containing an account of the 83rd Congress, which must hold the all time record for shifting majorities:

"The Republicans had a Senate plurality from January to July 1953. Then the Democrats had a plurality until June 1954; the Republicans again until December 1954; and finally the Democrats again until the 83d Congress ended in January 1955. These periods were occasionally interrupted by a week or two, and in one case a month, when the parties were tied.

For nearly half of the 83d Congress, the Democrats had more Senate seats than the Republicans. But for the entire two years, Republicans chaired the committees and ran the Senate. Republican Senator William Knowland frequently referred to himself as a majority leader without a majority, and his Democratic counterpart, Lyndon Johnson, said, “If anyone has more problems than a majority leader with a minority, it is a minority leader with a majority.”"

It also contains an account of Sen. Wayne Morse's difficulties finding a stable party identity after he left the Republicans:

"When the Senate met at the start of the 83d Congress, Morse refused to sit with either party in the Senate chamber and instead sat on a folding chair in the aisle between the Republican side and the Democratic side. When he realized this made him look silly, he resumed his seat on the Republican side even though he was no longer a Republican. Then he wanted to sit among the Democrats because, he said, two Republican senators kept whispering insults at him."

I went and checked the Senate's Organizing Resolutions, and it's true: whereas the 107th Congress's resolution (S. Res. 8) does provide for a shift in control of the Senate if the majority shifts, there is no such language in the organizing resolutions for the present Congress (S. Res. 27 and 28.) Which means that I feel no compunction whatsoever about saying:

Joe Lieberman: go jump in a lake. The Republicans can have you.

Chimpanzees Make Weapons

by hilzoy

From the Washington Post

"Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the hand-crafted tools to hunt small mammals -- the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.

The multi-step spear-making practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of years ago.

The landmark observation also supports the long-debated proposition that females -- the main makers and users of spears among the Senegalese chimps -- tend to be the innovators and creative problem solvers in primate culture.

Using their hands and teeth, the chimpanzees were repeatedly seen tearing the side branches off long straight sticks, peeling back the bark and sharpening one end, the researchers report in today's on-line issue of the journal Current Biology. Then, grasping the weapon in a "power grip," they jabbed into tree-branch hollows where bush babies -- small monkey-like mammals -- sleep during the day.

After stabbing their prey repeatedly, they removed the injured or dead animal and ate it.

"It was really alarming how forceful it was," said lead researcher Jill D. Pruetz of Iowa State University in Ames, adding that it reminded her of the murderous shower scene in the Alfred Hitchcock movie "Psycho." "It was kind of scary." (...)

In a typical sequence, the animal first discovered a deep hollow suitable for bush babies, which are nocturnal and weigh about half a pound. Then the chimp would break off a nearby branch -- on average about two feet long, but up to twice that length -- trim it, sharpen it with its teeth, and poke it repeatedly into the hollow at a rate of about one or two jabs per second.

After every few jabs, the chimpanzee would sniff or lick the tip, as though testing to see if it had "caught" anything."

Though I don't really have anything to say about it, I was intrigued by the part about female chimpanzees being the more proficient tool-makers and problem-solvers:

"Adrienne Zihlman, an anthropologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said the work supports other evidence that female chimps are more likely to use tools than males, are more proficient tool users, and are crucial to passing that cultural knowledge to others.

"Females are the teachers," Zihlman said, noting that juvenile chimps in Senegal were repeatedly seen watching their mothers make and hunt with spears.

"They are efficient and innovative, they are problem solvers, they are curious," Zihlman said of females. And that makes sense, she said.

"They are pregnant or lactating or carrying a kid for most of their life," she said. "And they're supposed to be running around in the trees chasing prey?""

I think primatology is one of the coolest disciplines in the world. I only hope it has a chance to continue -- most primate species, chimps included, are projected to go extinct within a few decades.

Double sunset

by Charles

I was driving home from the office the other day, taking the semi-scenic route, and noticed a highly unusual sunset. I'm not sure if the picture does it justice, but looks like a regular sunset at the left and a second one--about half as strong--at the right. The photo was taken from Scoop Jackson's extended front yard.

The foreground is Naval Station Everett, home to the USS Abraham Lincoln, and further back is Puget Sound, Whidbey Island and the Olympic mountain range. Here's a close-up of the faux sunset.

The above photo is in the direction of Sequim, which is in the Olympic mountain rain shadow and gets about 10 inches of a rain per year, and past Sequim is the Strait of Wanda Fuca*. There must have been a hole in the clouds that created this effect. Anyway, in all my years in the Seattle area, I'd never seen anything like this before.

Just Shoot Me Now -- If You Have A Rifle...

by hilzoy

Honestly, I thought I was done for the night, but then I found this NYT article about troops deploying without, get this, rifles:

"“We’re behind the power curve, and we can’t piddle around,” Maj. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, commander of the Oklahoma National Guard, said in an interview. He added that one-third of his soldiers lacked the M-4 rifles preferred by active-duty soldiers and that there were also shortfalls in night vision goggles and other equipment. If his unit is going to be sent to Iraq next year, he said, “We expect the Army to resource the Guard at the same level as active-duty units.” (...)

Capt. Christopher Heathscott, a spokesman for the Arkansas National Guard, said the state’s 39th Brigade Combat Team was 600 rifles short for its 3,500 soldiers and also lacked its full arsenal of mortars and howitzers."

Just when I think nothing they do can surprise me, I turn out to be wrong.

(For the record: yes, I expect that they will turn up some rifles, night-vision equipment, mortars, and howitzers for these soldiers. At least, I hope so, though with this bunch, it;s hard to be sure. But I always thought that it was important to actually train on equipment, not just to have it tossed in your general direction when you land in Baghdad. Not having these things now does matter.)

Two Countries

by hilzoy

Zimbabwe's meltdown continues apace, but today (the 21st) we have the added irony of Robert Mugabe's birthday celebration, to which his starving populace is being asked to contribute:

"President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe turned 83 on Wednesday to the strains of the song “God Bless President Mugabe” on state-controlled radio, along with an interview on state television, a 16-page paean to his rule in Harare’s daily newspaper and the prospect of a grand birthday party — costly enough to feed thousands of people for months, his critics argued — on Saturday.

Zimbabwe’s economy is so dire that bread vanished from store shelves across the country on Wednesday after bakeries shut down, saying government price controls were requiring them to sell loaves at a loss. The price controls are supposed to shield consumers from the nation’s rampant inflation, which now averages nearly 1,600 percent annually.

In Harare, the capital, the police banned demonstrations and political gatherings in the city’s sprawling townships on Wednesday, citing the threat of looting and vandalism. Slum dwellers clashed with policemen on Sunday after the police blocked a court-approved rally by political opponents of Mr. Mugabe.

His critics called the ban an act of desperation, and some said that Zimbabwe’s deepening economic crisis was beginning to goad citizens into political action despite the threat of arrest and beating."

Meanwhile, the teachers have gone on strike, and Sokwanele reports:

"The state controlled price of mealie meal, our staple food has just risen some 9567% in one jump and not long ago people were buying it for $500 -600 per 10 kg and now it is heading up to over $20 000, half of a domestic workers monthly wage.

10kgs lasts one person about 4 weeks."

A 9567% price increase in the staple food? Dear God.

Just next door, however, things are different:

"Paulo Zucula listens intently to the aid workers' firsthand reports: Whole villages submerged. Hungry families. An estimated 70,000 now homeless. The nightly updates list the mounting challenges as Mozambique experiences the worst flooding since 2000 and 2001.

Yet, Mr. Zucula, the head of Mozambique's National Disaster Management Institute, exudes calm, even satisfaction. Unlike six years ago, when the flooding killed some 700 people, the government says that fewer than 10 people have died so far.

This time, the Mozambican government moved early and deliberately to avert a massive humanitarian crisis. Months ago, it began preparing to evacuate villages, moved food supplies into the area, and had set up early warning systems throughout the flood-prone Zambezi River basin.

"If you're looking for a success story of an African government that's trying to make things better for its people, this is a very good example of that," says Mike Huggins, spokesman for the U.N.'s World Food Program (WFP) in southern Africa. "Their response [to flooding this time] is massively better. The government is doing a lot this year to try to mitigate the impact — they've evacuated everyone from the really critical areas, they've made sure that the U.N. and the aid organizations are all working together to bring a coordinated response.""

Mozambique isn't out of the woods yet -- a category three cyclone is bearing down on it even as I write -- but this really is extraordinary. To see why, you need to know three things.

First, Mozambique has some pretty serious potential for flooding. Along with some smaller rivers, the Zambezi and the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees both run through it. They do not, as far as I know, have much in the way of flood control: no levees, dams, and so forth. So when it rains a lot, there are floods Big floods. In 2000 not only did seven hundred people die in the floods, but half a million people were left homeless.

Second, Mozambique is desperately poor. The World Bank puts its per capita national income at $310/year, and life expectancy at 42 years. I don't think it's one of the world's ten poorest countries anymore, as it was in 1999 when I went there, but it's still desperately poor.

Third, it has one of those horrible histories that one might think would excuse almost anything. It was colonized by Portugal, which wasn't as bad a colonial power as Belgium or Germany, but was nonetheless pretty bad. Unlike many west east (duh) African countries, it was a major center of the slave trade. Portugal abruptly decided to pull out in 1974, leaving Mozambique with virtually no trained anyone (I can't find the statistics now, but there was something like one doctor and three lawyers, or possibly the other way around. For the entire country.)

The somewhat surprised resistance group that found itself in control of Mozambique when the Portuguese pulled out was Marxist, though what they understood of Marx is open to question; certainly at some point their Marxism became tactical (they badly wanted help, and tried to get it from the USSR; they even tried to join the Warsaw Pact, which I've always found sort of pitiful.) In any case, what was then Rhodesia funded a civil war against the government the next year; when the white government in Rhodesia fell, South Africa continued to fund it. This led to about fifteen years of truly ghastly civil war -- the kind in which people are nailed to trees and boiled alive, and children are kidnapped and forced to kill their parents. The anti-government rebels were worse, but neither side was good.

When the apartheid government fell in South Africa, the rebels lost their funding, and a miracle happened: the two sides in this horrific war made peace, and the opposition became a political party. The government gave up Marxism-Leninism, and has tried pretty hard to do a good job. (It was trying before, but the combination of a civil war and an unfortunate ideology didn't help.) It's not perfect, and there are reports of corruption (I think this is worse than when I was there), but all things considered, Mozambique has made astonishing progress. Its economy is growing by 7-8% a year (except in 2000, when the floods washed its growth away), and has been for quite a while now. (Admittedly, this is a lot easier to manage when your initial GDP is barely detectable, but still.)

And now, the little country that could has managed such a good response to pretty serious flooding that only ten people have died so far. I think this is absolutely heroic, given Mozambique's resources.

It just goes to show what decent government can do; just as Zimbabwe shows the opposite. May Zimbabwe get the government its people deserve as soon as possible, and may the floods recede in scrappy little Mozambique.

Tom Vilsack's Very, Very Bad Idea

by hilzoy

I didn't watch the Democratic debate (debates? This early??), but then I noticed (h/t Atrios and Matt Yglesias) that Jonathan Singer at MyDD wrote this:

"Final question covers Social Security and Medicare. Vilsack talks about balancing the budget of these programs by reindexing the program to prices, not prices and wages."

Price indexing? Yikes. Like Matt, I didn't want to leap to conclusions, so I turned on CSPAN's video of the debate and proceeded to take a shower, clean my study, and so on, until I got to the relevant part of the debate. (If anyone else wants to do this: the question is at 41 minutes into the clip; the quote below is at around 42 minutes.) Here's Vilsack's actual quote:

"First and foremost, you're going to have to take a look at the way in which Social Security is indexed. Currently, it's indexed based on wages and price; we can index it on price and still maintain the stability of Social Security and maintain the purchasing power of Social Security without necessarily jeopardizing the future of Social Security."

Darn. I didn't know much about Tom Vilsack, but he was somewhere below Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson, but above Hillary Clinton and Mike Gravel, on my list of people to consider if Obama self-destructs and Clark doesn't run. With that one paragraph, however, he has dropped to the spot right above Dennis Kucinich.

Price indexing is a very wonky concept. I tried to explain it as clearly as I could here; explanations by actual economists, with tables, are here and here. Anyone who actually knows economics should head for the latter two links; the merit of my post, if it has one, is that since I started out having no clue what price indexing was, I explain it in terms suitable for people who don't have any clue either.

While price indexing itself is a bit complicated, however, its effects are simple. It would, essentially, transform Social Security over time from a program in which people who pay more in get more out to a program in which people who earn over a given (low) amount (in the version the President seemed to favor, this was $20,000/year) all get the same benefit. Or, in short: within 80 years or so, Social Security becomes a program in which no one gets more than what the poor get today.

This is a very, very bad deal. It guts Social Security as an element of retirement security, since it makes most workers' Social Security benefits shrink dramatically, even though the taxes they pay in remain the same.

But we have ways of getting back at Tom Vilsack. Not only have I bumped him way down on my list, and not only will I link to the picture of him dressed as Winnie-the-Pooh, I'll post the picture that shows Tom Vilsack dressed as the crocodile from Peter Pan his Social Security plan on the verge of devouring your benefits:

I wasn't going to do this -- after all, he gets into these costumes for the sake of his wife's literacy events, and I think that a willingness to look silly in a good cause is a good thing in general, and a very rare good thing among Presidential candidates -- but if he's going to go around endorsing price indexing, then the gloves are off.

***

UPDATE: Vilsack has responded here. Excerpt:

" am against any so-called “reform” of Social Security and Medicare that cuts, reduces, freezes or privatizes benefits. I will work with Congress so that we maintain the stability and purchasing power of Social Security and Medicare, always remembering that it is first and foremost about people.

But, I will not ignore the fact that we have a big problem before us. I will not be satisfied by letting our children and grandchildren deal with this problem. And I will not allow a solution that includes privatizing Social Security and Medicare because it exacerbates the problem. Grassroots activists throughout the country helped shine a light on the problems of Pres. Bush’s proposal. I will do everything I can as President to protect Social Security and Medicare from those who want to reduce benefits for whatever reason."

Frankly, I'm not sure I see how to square price indexing with not cutting benefits. When the campaign clarifies this, I'll post it (if I see it.)

Obama On Preventive War

by hilzoy

About a week ago, Katherine wrote that the issue she'd most like to ask the Democratic candidates for President about is the Bush doctrine of preventive war. It's important, in this context, to be clear on the distinction between preventive and preemptive war. Preemptive war is a war started when you know that an enemy is about to attack you, but has not yet done so; the standard description of preemption is Daniel Webster's: the "necessity of that self-defence is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation". Preventive war is a war started against an enemy who is not (as far as you know) actually about to attack you, but whom you regard as a threat for some other reason. Preemptive war has always been regarded as OK: if you see an enemy massing its troops at the border, entering the launch codes on its missiles, and so forth, you do not have to wait until that enemy actually strikes. Preventive war, by contrast, has not generally been regarded as OK. Nonetheless, it's one of the pillars of the "Bush Doctrine":

"If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. (Applause.) (...) The war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge. (Applause.) In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act. (Applause.)" (emphasis added.)

I agree with Katherine that this is one of the most important questions facing Democratic candidates. Since I'm leaning towards Obama, I thought I'd see if I could figure out where he stood on this question. Short answer: He doesn't actually come right out and say "I oppose preventive war", but he comes pretty close. The longer answer is below the fold.