Month: March 2011

Is the presidency beneath Palin?

Benjy Sarlin at TPMDC has a post up about the fascinating effort by movement conservatives to spin the idea that the presidency is actually beneath Sarah Palin and being elected would be a waste of her time. This is a remarkable idea and it’s being floated by conservative media figures like Andrew Breitbart and Ann Coulter. Somehow appearing with fringe Republican groups, nodding along on Fox News and posting the occasional Facebook rant is more important than being the leader of the free world. On the one hand, this spin clearly seems to be an effort to proactively protect Palin’s relevance in the event that she either fails to win the GOP nomination or fails to win the White House. It can’t be such a loss if it’d be a step down for someone as iconic as Palin…right guys? Right?

But on the other hand, this narrative demonstrates a sickening lack of regard for the institution of the presidency and the American project. This goes well beyond conservatives wanting to shrink government to a size where it can be drowned in a bathtub. Breitbart and Coulter are pushing a narrative that says the office of the President of the United States of America is not worthy of a fellow Fox News contributor’s time. It is a public assault on patriotism and national service (what would Reagan say?). It is an attack on the Constitution and the vision of the Founding Fathers for three coequal branches of government (what will the tri-corner hat wearing, Gadsden flag-carrying Tea Partiers say?). That this spin is being put forth in order to hedge the relevance of a marginal political intellect who poses a limited grasp of anything beyond the politics of resentment just makes it even more reprehensible.

Cross posted at AMERICAblog Elections: The Right’s Field

Solnit on Revolutions & Tipping Points

At TomDispatch.com, Rebecca Solnit has an incredibly thoughtful essay on the nature of tipping points and revolutions, specifically through the change movements we’ve seen around the world in the last three months, as well as historical looks at revolutionary movements going back two hundred years in history. Along the way she connects movements in Egypt, Tunisia, and Wisconsin to Wikileaks, the French Revolution, the civil rights movement, Charter 77  and the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. Solnit’s analysis is encouraging in a way that the technophobic rants of Malcolm Gladwell are not; actual realism involves taking a holistic view of what is happening and understanding individual pieces in concert, not looking at one piece of technology and blaming it for not being things it cannot be.

That the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can shape the weather in Texas is a summation of chaos theory that is now an oft-repeated cliché. But there are billions of butterflies on earth, all flapping their wings. Why does one gesture matter more than another? Why this Facebook post, this girl with a drum?

Even to try to answer this you’d have to say that the butterfly is born aloft by a particular breeze that was shaped by the flap of the wing of, say, a sparrow, and so behind causes are causes, behind small agents are other small agents, inspirations, and role models, as well as outrages to react against. The point is not that causation is unpredictable and erratic. The point is that butterflies and sparrows and young women in veils and an unknown 20-year-old rapping in Arabic and you yourself, if you wanted it, sometimes have tremendous power, enough to bring down a dictator, enough to change the world.

…

It is remarkable how, in other countries, people will one day simply stop believing in the regime that had, until then, ruled them, as African-Americans did in the South here 50 years ago.  Stopping believing means no longer regarding those who rule you as legitimate, and so no longer fearing them. Or respecting them. And then, miraculously, they begin to crumble.

…

Revolution is also the action of people pushed to the brink. Rather than fall over, they push back. When he decided to push public employees hard and strip them of their collective bargaining rights, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker took a gamble. In response, union members, public employees, and then the public of Wisconsin began to gather on February 11th.  By February 15th, they had taken over the state’s capitol building as the revolution in Egypt was still at full boil. They are still gathering.  Last weekend, the biggest demonstration in Madison’s history was held, led by a “tractorcade” of farmers. The Wisconsin firefighters have revolted too.  And the librarians.  And the broad response has given encouragement to citizens in other states fighting similar cutbacks on essential services and rights.

Republicans like to charge the rest of us with “class war” when we talk about economic injustice, and that’s supposed to be a smear one should try to wriggle out of. But what’s going on in Wisconsin is a class war, in which billionaire-backed Walker is serving the interests of corporations and the super-rich, and this time no one seems afraid of the epithet. Jokes and newspaper political cartoons, as well as essays and talks, remark on the reality of our anti-trickle-down economy, where wealth is being pumped uphill to the palaces at a frantic rate, and on the reality that we’re not poor or broke, just crazy in how we distribute our resources.

What’s scary about the situation is that it is a test case for whether the party best serving big corporations can strip the rest of us of our rights and return us to a state of poverty and powerlessness. If the people who gathered in Madison don’t win, the war will continue and we’ll all lose.

Oppression often works — for a while. And then it backfires. Sometimes immediately, sometimes after several decades. Walker has been nicknamed the Mubarak of the Midwest. Much of the insurrection and the rage in the Middle East isn’t just about tyranny; it’s about economic injustice, about young people who can’t find work, can’t afford to get married or leave their parents’ homes, can’t start their lives. This is increasingly the story for young Americans as well, and here it’s clearly a response to the misallocation of resources, not absolute scarcity. It could just be tragic, or it could get interesting when the young realize they are being shafted, and that life could be different. Even that it could change, quite suddenly, and for the better. [Emphasis added]

Solnit’s whole piece is great, as well as inspiring.

Tendor on Phuntsog’s Self-Immolation

My colleague Tenzin Dorjee, Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet, has a great quote in the New York Times explaining the meaning of the self-immolation by a young Tibetan monk named Phuntsog in Ngaba, Tibet:

“China’s violent rule in Tibet has escalated since 2008 to a point where Tibetans feel compelled to take desperate action,” Tenzin Dorjee, executive director of ’Students for a Free Tibet, based in New York, said in a statement. “Phuntsog Jarutsang’s self-immolation is a window into the deep suffering and frustrations that Tibetans everywhere are feeling, and is an urgent cry for help that the global community cannot ignore.”

Haley Barbour: Reduce troops in Afghanistan

Originally posted at AMERICAblog Elections: The Right’s Field

David Dayen finds something you won’t see every day: a conservative Republican expressing doubt about the US mission in Afghanistan. In this case, it’s Haley Barbour:

(Barbour) also said that the U.S. should consider reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan. “I think we need to look at that,” he said when asked if the U.S. should scale back its presence.

But he said his reasoning isn’t financial.

“What is our mission?” Barbour said. “How many Al Qaeda are in Afghanistan. … Is that a 100,000-man Army mission?”

“I don’t think our mission should be to think we’re going to make Afghanistan an Ireland or an Italy” or a Western-style democracy, he said.

Mike Huckabee recently said Haley Barbour was “possibly the most brilliant political mind in America.” I found that assessment of someone with a sketchy history of statements and positions on race to be laughable. But it’s hard not to respect what Barbour is doing now. Barbour is breaking with Republican orthodoxy and in so doing creating contrast between himself and his primary opponents. The break isn’t as dramatic as you’d think in an environment where despite two-thirds of America wanting to end the war, it’s been escalated by a Democratic President. Add in that Huckabee himself expressed doubts last month about how we get out of Afghanistan and Barbour’s position is slightly less remarkable. That said, calling for an exit from Afghanistan is a popular position in America that is not often stated by politicians who wear a “D” after their name. We’ll see how much Afghanistan becomes an issue in the 2012 Republican primary. I’d be somewhat surprised if either Barbour or Huckabee push their chips in on ending war their base has cheered for nearly a decade.

Self-Immolation & Protests in Ngaba, Tibet

Early Kate Saunders of International Campaign for Tibet tweeted:

@katesictibet A young Tibetan monk set himself on fire at Kirti in Tibet; protests that followed were violently suppressed, news just emerging

Now Phayul is reporting the story with more details:

A Tibetan monk of Kirti monastery in Amdo Ngaba is reportedly dead after he set himself ablaze at a market near his monastery, according to a reliable source with contacts in the region.

The source said that Phuntsok, 21, of Kirti monastery carried out protest at the busy market of Ngaba around 4PM (Beijing Time) before immolating himself. It is not yet known what slogans he chanted during the brief protest that was, according to the source, aimed to mark the 3rd anniversary of bloody crackdown on Tibetan protesters in Ngaba on March 16, 2008.

Chinese police immediately arrived at the scene, doused the fire, and beat Phuntsok, said the source. As the police were trying to take him away in a waiting police van scores of Tibetans rushed to the scene and protected Phuntsok. The crowd later grew in numbers, and took Phuntsok to his monastery making sure the Chinese police did not take him away. According to unconfirmed information from Ngaba, Phuntsok has succumbed to his burns, and that his body is lying in a chapel of the monastery.

Hundreds of angry Tibetans immediately gathered at the main market and carried out protests against the Chinese government. They walked almost a mile from the main market chanting anti-government slogans before being dispersed by Chinese security forces. Troops have been brought in from neighboring areas to quell the protests. Hundreds of Tibetans were arrested, and several others sustained injuries from electric baton and iron rods used by Chinese soldiers on the protesters.

Reuters has more.

Long But Good Read

Yves Smith on the proposed mortgage modification program floated by the Obama administration. It’s very long, but very thoughtful and worth a read. It’s also a good starting point for people who haven’t been following this closely, as Smith gives a lot of background analysis before getting to the meat of this new proposal.

Join SFT’s Rangzen Circle Drive

Sign up today and help us reach our goal of 100 new members by Monday, March 21. Here are the Top Ten Reasons to Support SFT:

Reason 10: SFT is youth
Our base of young Tibetans and supporters know change is possible. Young people have the passion, commitment, and inexhaustible energy to work for what they believe in.

Reason 9: SFT is nonviolent
We apply nonviolence theory and practice to our activism for Tibet because we believe it’s the most effective way to achieve our goal. There is no better way to fight for peace than to promote nonviolence as a weapon.

Reason 8: SFT is grassroots
We’re a network of students, Tibetans, activists, professionals, artists, volunteers, and many others working at the grassroots level to mobilize people power in a way that truly changes the course of history.

Reason 7: SFT is diverse
SFT’s membership is composed of Tibetans, Americans, Europeans, Indians, Chinese, Canadians, Australians, Japanese, Taiwanese, and dozens of other nationalities with diverse cultural backgrounds and political viewpoints — because the goal of Tibetan freedom unites everyone.

Reason 6: SFT is global
We are everywhere. With members in more than 50 countries, chapters and networks in 35 countries, and offices in 4 countries, our constituency spans the globe.

Reason 5: SFT is cutting-edge
SFT’s membership and leadership is made up of the most talented innovators, strategists, and visionary techies. We use the latest information technology and social media tools to successfully execute campaigns and actions that inspire Tibetans and directly challenge China’s control over Tibet.

Reason 4: SFT is about training
We invest in the next generation of Tibetan leaders and Tibet activists through our unique leadership training programs. Our Free Tibet! Action Camps and regional trainings help young leaders hone their skills to effectively lead strategic campaigns and non-violent actions for Tibet.

Reason 3: SFT is fun
We believe in hard work and in having fun. We emphasize the importance of humor and laughter in our work, so that freedom is not merely the destination but also the journey.

Reason 2: SFT is strategic
We think and plan before we act. Our leadership has the vision, experience, and strategy to develop and execute effective campaigns and actions.

Reason 1: SFT is for an independent Tibet
Ultimately, we believe that the social, economic, environmental, and cultural interests of the Tibetan people can only be truly safeguarded if Tibet is an independent nation. We know this goal is possible and will continue to work hard to achieve it.

Give today.

Nukes and Banks

John Moyers at AMERICAblog makes a great point, namely nuclear power is an industry defined by privatized profits and socialized risks. This is exactly like the financial sector around the world, where banksters made hundreds of billions of dollars in profits and bonuses doing things that blew up the global economy and begat a massive bailout by the American public (and other countries’ citizenries). Just saying.