Obsidian Wings

Of Coups, Purges, Torture and Shoes

by Eric Martin

No big surprise to readers of this site, but the purported "coup" plot in Iraq that was used as a pretense by Prime Minister Maliki to purge the Ministry of the Interior/Defense Ministry of political adversaries turns out to have been nothing of the sort:

Iraq’s interior minister said all 24 of his officers who had been arrested in a security crackdown this week would be released. And in a bold gesture of defiance, he publicly condemned his own government’s investigation, calling the accusations false and motivated purely by politics.

The minister, Jawad al-Bolani, in a series of interviews and at a news conference on Friday, insisted on the innocence of the officials detained on charges of aiding terrorism and having inappropriate ties with political parties, including Al Awda, an illegal party that is a descendant of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

“It’s because of the competition of the provincial elections,” Mr. Bolani, who arrived in the country on Friday after a week away, said of the arrests in an interview. “It’s just electoral propaganda, and that’s playing with fire.”

In his forceful rejection of the charges, Mr. Bolani was careful not to mention names and was not specific in explaining how these arrests could benefit anyone specifically in the prelude to the crucial provincial elections next month. But it seemed, at least temporarily, to be a serious blow to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, given the crackdown’s close association with him.

It also seemed to raise the temperature of Iraqi politics, possibly fueling a rivalry between Mr. Bolani and Mr. Maliki, both prominent Shiite politicians, in a way that could damage either or both of them. Attempts to reach the prime minister’s spokesman were unsuccessful.

News of the arrests had already led to an angry response from other Iraqi political leaders, particularly those in rival parties to Dawa, Mr. Maliki’s party, who were angered by what they saw as a largely politically driven operation to intimidate rivals near the elections.

Even Maliki is trying to downplay talk of an actual coup plot:

Those who talk of coups in this country are delusional, because there is no coup in this country and there is no one who even contemplates such a thing.

According to Badger, a government spokesman, General Qasem Atta, moves further away from talk of a coup:

But the more interesting part of his remarks had to do with what sort of people were being arrested. He said there was no attempt at a coup. Rather this was an assortment of different kinds of bad people. He put it this way, in a statement released Thursday evening, (according to AlHayat):

"The general directorate of the armed forces announces the arrest of 24 officers in the Ministries of the Interior and Defence, having no relationship to any attempted coup". Rather, the statement said, the arrests were "based on intelligence about some of the officers' facilitating activities of terrorism, and assistance to outlaws and to the remnants of the former regime."

If that sounds vaguely familiar, it is because that trio of "terror, outlaws and the remnants of the former regime," is the centerpiece of the new security agreement, which in Article 4 "Missions", section 1 (official White House version, pdf) says this: "The government of Iraq requests the temporary assistance of the United States for the purposes of supporting Iraq in its efforts to maintain security and stability in Iraq, including cooperation in the conduct of operations against AlQaeda and other terrorist groups, outlaw groups, and the remnants of the former regime."

Such serendipitous synergy!  That, or Maliki knows all the useful invocations.  Meanwhile, in other Iraq the Model news, Saddam's torture chambers are closed:

Munathir al-Zaydi's brother Uday met with him in prison on Sunday, and relayed to the press his brother's account of the torture and attempted extraction of a confession from him, following the shoe-throwing incident on Thursday.

The purpose of the torture was to extract a videotaped confession from him to the effect some political group or militia was behind this...This was not successful, and al-Zaydi, through his brother, repeated that his act was on behalf of all Iraqis. Maliki himself, pushing ahead with the sectarian story, issued a statement to the effect some killer of Iraqis was behind this, and anyone supporting al-Zaydi is an opponent of "the political process in Iraq".

...the torture included: Kicking and punching; beating all over the body with chains; cigarettes extinguisned behind his ears; stripped of his clothes and doused in cold water; subjected to electric shocks. The torture lasted for 30 hours. Uday said he say the evidence of that in the form of bruises, swellings and cuts all over his brother's body. As for the purpose of all this:

Uday reported that his brother said one of the purposes of this torture was to extract from him a confession that he had been motivated to do this by one of the parties or one of the militias. They brought a video camera to record his confession of this. Under pressure of the torture, his brother asked them to [have him] sign a black piece of paper, and they could then write on it what they liked. But Maliki's guards, who were supervising the torture, rejected that, and insisted on a videotaped confession!"

But who is to say the use of torture should be outlawed in The New Iraq? What if al-Zaydi knew of a ticking shoe bomb that was about to go off somewhere in Iraq?  Therefore, the use of torture is entirely justifiable.   

A Special Note Re: Senator Shelby

by The Management*

Most readers know that the views expressed by Publius are his own and don’t always reflect the views of the institutional blog. Such is the case with regard to Matt’s Publius's comments about Senator Shelby and the bailout. Shelby is a fine principled man, and he just paid all of us (except for Publius) $100. Therefore, we have a great deal of respect for his critical thinking and excellent, totally principled work product. Therefore, we are intruding and actually posting on this blog to let you know that we think Shelby is awesome. Senator -- we emailed you our mailing address.

Detroit and the Battle for Norms

by publius

So I've been reading Lessig's new book Remix, which provides further examples of how idiotic our copyright policy is. I'll write more later, but one of Lessig's main goals is "norms" reform. That is, he wants to change what people conceive of as normal and accepted.

For instance, it would be perceived as outrageous if, say, Josh Marshall sued me for excerpting a piece of his post. Even if fair use didn't exist, selective quoting would be perceived as "ok" -- that's the prevailing norm. File sharing is the other side of that coin. We may not like the fact that RIAA was allowed to sue elderly people and penniless college students. But because of prevailing norms, the broader public didn't see it as the utter outrage that it is.

This idea of "norms" is playing a key part in the Detroit debate. The debate not only reflects the poverty of our existing norms about economic relations, but it provides an opportunity to change them -- one we seem to be squandering.

Republican opponents of the bailout like Senator Shelby (libertarian hero; defender of state-subsidized Alabama plants) have unfairly targeted union workers throughout this debate. One goal of their rhetoric is to discredit the norm of union-provided prosperity. The very idea that workers could enjoy a higher premium and better benefits through union negotiations is anathema to them. The UAW's success isn't Exhibit A for the benefits that unions could provide to middle-class America -- they're an undeserved freak show that violates the immutable natural laws of the great free market.

In short, the great tragedy of Detroit could be the idea (the norm) that this form of middle-class prosperity is possible. As Jonathan Cohn explains, the success of UAW earlier last century cascaded to employees across the country. Its failure (its forced failure) will do the same.

Looking forward, the debate would also allow us to change other norms -- such as the idea that it's ok for executives to receive gazillion times more income than workers whose wages have stagnated for decades. We've come to accept this idea -- this norm -- but it's a pernicious one. Concentrating wealth at the top creates all sorts of problems -- it helped, for example, create the conditions of our current meltdown. If the top 1% didn't have all this disposable income sitting around, maybe they wouldn't be as inclined to blow money on the latest speculative fad.

The larger point here is that the battle for Detroit is about more than just the auto industry. It will also help reinforce -- or reverse -- the norms that currently govern economic allocation questions.

No More Double Standards

by hilzoy

I've been wondering why such different standards are applied to financial executives and Detroit's auto workers. Consider:

* The financial executives helped cause the present meltdown. Auto workers did not.

* The financial executives run their firms, and are responsible for their troubles. Auto workers and their union, by contrast, just got themselves a good deal by bargaining with management. That's their prerogative. I don't see that they're any more to blame for the problems of the Big Three than people who accept unduly large cash back bonuses on their new cars would be, had the Big Three miscalculated and given away more in cash-back bonuses than they could afford.

* Financial executives have just destroyed a tremendous amount of value and ruined the global economy. Auto workers have been busy creating useful things.

* In exchange for destroying value, financial executives get paid a whole lot more than auto workers. Orders of magnitude more. They even get multi-million dollar performance bonuses when their firms lose money! And their benefits are a lot more cushy: not just good health care but private jets and chauffeurs!

* Punishing financial executives helps reduce moral hazard. Punishing auto workers does not.

Honestly: what sense does it make to stick it to a bunch of auto workers while letting the financial executives off scot-free? How can Richard Shelby get all upset about the fact that some blue-collar workers have, gasp, health care, and not about the fact that financial executives, on whom we have spent a lot more money than the Big Three ever asked for, get financial planners and chauffeurs? Just imagine the furious oratory we might have heard had the UAW succeeded in negotiating benefits like the ones people get at Goldman Sachs. (I'll bet chauffeurs would help auto workers concentrate more on their jobs...)

For the reasons given above, I think that we should stick it to the bankers and hedge fund managers, and not to the UAW. However, I'd be happy with a single standard uniformly applied. rok for dean at dKos has a good idea:

"In 1950, the average pay of an S&P 500 CEO was less than 30 times that of an average U.S. worker; by 1980, prior to the "Reagan Revolution, the average pay of the S&P 500 CEO was approximately 50 times higher than that of an average U.S worker. But by 2007, the average pay of an S&P 500 CEO had soared to more than 350 times as much as that of an average U.S. worker.

This is both immoral and unsustainable in a democracy. By way of comparison, in Europe, an average CEO only makes 22 times as much as an average worker, and in Japan, only 17 times as much.

If America wants to be competitive again, we need to reduce CEO pay to a level comparable to CEO pay in Europe and Japan. I know exactly how to accomplish this feat. The UAW should agree to immediately lower U.S. union worker pay to a level equal to the level paid by their non-union, non-American competitors. In return, auto CEO’s must agree to permanently lower their compensation to only 20 times that of an average union worker.

Once this has been accomplished, Congress must move to apply the same pay standards to AIG and all of the financial institutions that took one penny of taxpayer money from the TARP fund."

Amen. Only one addition: this has to include not just salary but benefits, and benefits should be equal to (not greater than) those enjoyed by the average American worker. Until the average worker's employer pays for his or her home security system or chauffeur, those multimillionaires on Wall Street can pay for those things out of their salaries.

Oblivious

by hilzoy

From the AP:

"Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals.

The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages.

Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.

The total amount given to nearly 600 executives would cover bailout costs for many of the 116 banks that have so far accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines."

There are all sorts of delightful tidbits in the article. Banks that took bailout funds paid for their executives' private financial advisors, club dues, home security systems, and chauffeurs and leased cars. Here's what passes for an explanation of all this:

"Goldman Sachs' tab for leased cars and drivers ran as high as $233,000 per executive. The firm told its shareholders this year that financial counseling and chauffeurs are important in giving executives more time to focus on their jobs."

I'm sure they're right. But the question is not: do chauffeurs contribute to peace of mind? It's: why should companies who are receiving taxpayer funds because they (meaning their executives) got themselves into deep trouble be paying for these things? Couldn't the executives, who are, after all, very well paid, pay for their own home security systems and financial planners and chauffeurs?

The super-rich seem to me, during the past few decades, to have wafted off into their own alternate universe, in which of course they are entitled to have their employers pay them not just large salaries, not just multi-million dollar bonuses every year, but the bills for everything that ordinary people pay for; in which flying on public airlines seems to them the way taking the public busses seems to much of the middle class; in which any possible contact with what the rest of us take to be reality has been airbrushed away by vast quantities of money.

Under normal circumstances, I'd think: nice work if you can get it, and worry about the effects of massive inequality on public life. But these are not normal times. The very people who are getting these bonuses and chauffeurs and private jets and financial planners have just sent the entire global economy into a nosedive. They have caused massive amounts of money to disappear. They are getting bailed out for their mistakes by the rest of us -- the people who, if we're lucky, get to fly coach, and if we're not, drive across the country or take a bus.

If they had any shame at all, they would stop. More than that: if they had any sense at all of how angry a lot of us are getting, sheer prudence would do the trick. This is our money. We are giving it to them to get all of us out of a problem that they caused. They should bear that in mind, not treat us as if we were one great big cookie jar.

The Beam In Our Eye

by hilzoy

Ever since I heard that opponents supporters (silly me, posting late at night) of Proposition 8 had filed suit to invalidate all the gay marriages that have taken place in California, I've been trying to wrap my mind around the fact that someone, somewhere had to actually initiate this process. That means that someone, somewhere must have decided that the best use of his or her time was not to perform some act of kindness or generosity, not to stand up for justice or to comfort the afflicted, not even to try to turn a profit, but to decide to get together a lawsuit in order to break thousands of people's marriages apart. That person could have gone to the beach, or worked a stint at a food kitchen, or taken up hang-gliding, or done any number of things, but instead he or she thought: why not do my best to tear thousands of people's lives apart, people who are not bothering them, people who only want to be married and have anniversaries and argue about who has to take out the trash, like anyone else.

It's a pretty strange way to choose to spend your time, if you ask me.

The LA Times has a profile of a couple who worked to get Proposition 8 passed, and are still working for the legal challenge to California's existing gay marriages. Here's what motivates them:

"The Ferreiras like life in their gated community in the eastern suburbs of San Diego. Their house, nestled at the end of a cul-de-sac, is comfortable, with plenty of room for them and their three grown children, who still live at home.

But the Ferreiras are afraid of what is happening to the world beyond the gates.

"I'm just seeing our morals and everything just deteriorating before us," Robbie, 49, said one recent evening.

"The first time they wanted to take prayer out of schools, we as believers should have stood up," said Abel, who was recently laid off from his job as a salesman of manufactured homes. "Every time you give them a little bit, they want more." (...)

One Sunday about a year ago, Garlow [their pastor] told his congregation what he thought the consequences of legalizing same-sex marriage would be.

Pastors around the state would be required to marry gays, he said. Businesses would be forced to recognize gay marriage. Schools would begin teaching children that gay and lesbian lifestyles are the norm.

"The thing that affected me the most was knowing that my grandkids are going to be taught this ungodly and sinful act as if it's OK," Robbie said. "I thought from that point on, 'No. I will fight for them. I don't have them yet, but I'm going to fight for them.'""

Somehow, they didn't manage to check out the truth of these claims. What does it mean to say that "businesses would be forced to recognize gay marriage"? Do supermarkets or Home Depots or pet grooming facilities normally have to take a position on the validity of people's marriage? Wouldn't pastors be protected by the First Amendment? And about those schools: would kids be taught that gay marriage is OK? And if so, so what? Last time I checked, parents are quite capable of telling kids when they disagree with teachers, and kids are quite capable of not believing everything their teachers tell them.

(Parenthetical note: it's odd how when politics enters the picture, people sometimes acquire a faith in the Svengali-like powers of teachers that makes absolutely no sense at all. In normal life, we know that overbearing or biassed teachers are more likely to annoy their students than anything else, and that even good teachers are not always believed. In politics, people sometimes assume that normal, obstreperous kids and adolescents are somehow transformed into docile, sheeplike beings who accept every word their teachers say. As a teacher, I find this very selective faith in us and our awesome powers quite perplexing.)

In any case, the Ferreiras didn't just call their friends and put up signs for Proposition 8:

"For 40 days, the couple gave up coffee and didn't eat for 12 hours a day. And Robbie gave up "Days of Our Lives," the soap opera she had been watching since high school."

Mr. Ferreira has just been laid off. All three kids are still at home, which probably means they're struggling too. The couple lives in a gated community. They are frightened by what lurks outside. I can see that. What I can't see is forgetting about compassion and charity, or neglecting such Biblical injunctions as not to cast the first stone unless one is without sin, and to worry about the beam in one's own eye before turning one's attention to the mote in another's.

If we worry about our morals deteriorating, surely the best place to start addressing that problem is in our own lives. We all have more than enough sins to occupy us. When we have extirpated them all, and learned courage, justice, generosity, and mercy, there will be time enough to worry about other people's marriages. And I suspect that once we have learned those things, we will not find the fact that some couple in love wants to get married at the top of our list of concerns.

Saturday Poetry Blogging

by hilzoy

Over at Ta-Nehisi's blog, I found a wonderful poem by Elizabeth Alexander, who has been invited to write a poem for Obama's inauguration. It's 'Hottentot Venus', about a woman from what is now South Africa who was taken to Europe and exhibited throughout Europe. When I was 12 or 13, I saw her skeleton, and I think some sort of cast, in Paris, where it was on exhibit in a museum (apparently, it has since been put away, thank God, along with her preserved brain and genitalia, which I do not recall. France returned her remains to South Africa in 2002.) I've put the poem below the fold; it's really, really good. Ta-Nehisi:

"I don't know how, but in my early readings of this piece, I missed perhaps the most important emotion--a kind of slow-burning rage. There are many ways to read those two quotes. But I'm black and Ta-Nehisi and what I see is the irony of science, how disciplines founded to better understand the world so often obscure the world."

I think that's right: right about the rage, right about the science. But it's also striking to me how she manages to combine a kind of generosity to Cuvier with that rage. The first part starts with such beauty, though as it goes on, you can see the inhumanity peering out from behind it. But a less generous poet would have left it out entirely.

But politics obscures the world as well. Googling around to find out more about the woman who wrote this poem, I found some other responses, from people who didn't seem to want to bother giving her a try. This from Newsmax is typical (it's worth reading the poem it excerpts in its entirety. You can make snippets from any poet sound dumb. Think of TS Eliot:

"Twit twit twit

Jug jug jug jug jug jug"

What a dope!)

In any case, enjoy!

Change Is Gonna Come

by hilzoy

Every so often, something reminds me all over again that things really are going to change dramatically on January 20. Today, it was Barack Obama's weekly address:

"Right now, in labs, classrooms and companies across America, our leading minds are hard at work chasing the next big idea, on the cusp of breakthroughs that could revolutionize our lives. But history tells us that they cannot do it alone. From landing on the moon, to sequencing the human genome, to inventing the Internet, America has been the first to cross that new frontier because we had leaders who paved the way: leaders like President Kennedy, who inspired us to push the boundaries of the known world and achieve the impossible; leaders who not only invested in our scientists, but who respected the integrity of the scientific process.

Because the truth is that promoting science isn't just about providing resources -- it's about protecting free and open inquiry. It's about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It's about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it's inconvenient -- especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States -- and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work."

After the last eight years, the idea of a President who doesn't just want to provide resources to science, but recognizes the importance of respecting the scientific method and actually seems likely to let the evidence guide his conclusions, is absolutely wonderful. And he has appointed some genuinely stellar people to advise him. The science community's response to Jane Lubchenco for NOAA is particularly striking:

Deep Sea News: Breaking News: Obama Appoints Totally Awesome Marine Biologist to Head NOAA! (h/t)

Chris Mooney: "Like, wow."

ScienceBlogs' Thoughts From Kansas: Lubchenco to NOAA! Hells yes

But the response to Obama's decision to name John Holdren as his science advisor, while less colorful, is really positive. Joe Romm:

"He probably has more combined expertise on both climate science and clean energy technology than any other person who could plausibly have been named science adviser."

Science's ScienceInsider blog:

"Researchers in [energy and climate research] were generally thrilled by yesterday's news (expected to be announced tomorrow) that Obama has tapped physicist John Holdren, an international expert on energy and climate issues, to be his science adviser."

Chris Mooney:

"Scientists are going to be beyond ecstatic about this speech, and this team that Obama has named."

You can see a good speech by Holdren here, and read his wonky Presidential Address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science here.

And I haven't even gotten to Obama's newest Nobel laureate, Harold Varmus, who will be co-chair of the Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, along with Dr. Eric Lander. It's a really, really impressive team.

Change is gonna come.

Step Away From That Shredder ...

by hilzoy

The AP, via FDL:

"Dick Cheney's lawyers are asserting that the vice president alone has the authority to determine which records, if any, from his tenure will be handed over to the National Archives when he leaves office in January. (...)

"The vice president alone may determine what constitutes vice presidential records or personal records, how his records will be created, maintained, managed and disposed, and are all actions that are committed to his discretion by law," according to a court filing by Cheney's office with the U.S. District Court on Dec. 8.

Cheney is being sued by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group that is trying to ensure that no presidential records are destroyed or handled in a way that makes them unavailable to the public.

The 1978 Presidential Records Act requires all presidential and vice presidential records to be transferred to the National Archives immediately upon the end of the president's last term of office and gives the archivist responsibility to preserve and control access to presidential records. The law ended the tradition of private ownership of presidential papers, opening White House records to the public and historians. (...)

But the law is unclear on how disagreements will be decided about the preservation of disputed records, said Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists.

"Decisions that are made in the next couple of weeks may prove irrevocable. If records are held from the archivist now they may never be recovered," Aftergood said.

A judge in September ordered Cheney to preserve all his records while the suit continued."

Someone needs to make sure that Cheney carries out that order. Cheney is exactly the sort of person who could decide to shred his documents and say to a judge: Go ahead, hold me in contempt. I dare you.

If he is not prosecuted, that will be bad enough. But if he destroys the record of his time in office, then we may never learn what he was actually up to when he claimed to be serving us, at our expense. A crucial part of the record of how our government was systematically perverted will be lost, and we will not be able to learn from it how to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again. We cannot let that happen. Too much depends on it.

Crimes & Misdemeanors

by Eric Martin

With all the talk about the symbolic value, symbolistry and pragmatism associated with Obama's selection of Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation, I consider the following measure to be of greater symbolic import, and hope that Obama addresses it appropriately and promptly:

Alone among major Western nations, the United States has refused to sign a declaration presented Thursday at the United Nations calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality.

In all, 66 of the U.N.'s 192 member countries signed the nonbinding declaration — which backers called a historic step to push the General Assembly to deal more forthrightly with any-gay discrimination. More than 70 U.N. members outlaw homosexuality, and in several of them homosexual acts can be punished by execution.

Co-sponsored by France and the Netherlands, the declaration was signed by all 27 European Union members, as well as Japan, Australia, Mexico and three dozen other countries. There was broad opposition from Muslim nations, and the United States refused to sign, indicating that some parts of the declaration raised legal questions that needed further review.

According to some of the declaration's backers, U.S. officials expressed concern in private talks that some parts of the declaration might be problematic in committing the federal government on matters that fall under state jurisdiction. In numerous states, landlords and private employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the federal level, gays are not allowed to serve openly in the military.

The legal concerns voiced are mostly illusory.  As stated, the declaration is non-binding, so approving its passage would not require any action on the part of the federal government vis-a-vis the states, or with respect to its own practices.  Further, the declaration deals with "decriminalizing" homosexuality which is different than outlawing discrimination in any and all forms (though the latter should be an important goal for the United States regardless).

To me, acts of government - even non-binding ones such as this declaration - matter more than the appearance of Rick Warren at an official event especially when you consider the viable strategic motives - from trying to shift the balance of power from within the evangelical movement to the Warren wing (which is less hostile to Dems), to getting concessions from Warren, to just simply trying to show openess to a group of people whose minds we are trying to change.  There is a value to that latter point.

To my immense pleasure, this country has made great strides in terms of overcoming anti-LGBT bigotry over the past few decades.  As indicated by the Bush administration's decision with respect to the UN declaration mentioned above, there is still a long way to go.  But the good news is, slowly but surely, we are becomning a more tolerant nation.  Part of that has to do with demographics - the post-60s shift in attitudes toward human sexuality manifests in greater numbers of tolerant Americans as new generations enter the population, while reactionary beliefs increasingly die off in that same demographic tidal flow. 

But part of the progress comes by helping to shift the attitudes of people not raised in a way that predisposes them to tolerance in this regard.  I don't know if Obama's inclusion of Warren will help to change any such minds, but I believe that if changing minds is his goal, one of the ways he can seek to facilitate that is to reach out to the target groups and show some warmth and inclusion.  It helps when groups or individuals feel anxiety or fear over certain social phenomena to seek to ratchet down the tension.  Sometimes such gestures loosen the resistance ever so slightly, and can tone down the volume of (some of) the opposition and/or win over a few converts.

(link via Andrew Sullivan)