Truth To Power

Rick Santorum proposes a One State Solution

2012-01-24T00:02:00.000-08:00

Foreign Policy's online blog has published an entry responding to video of Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum arguing that the turmoil between Israelis and Palestinians can be settled with a one state solution.

As the blogger for Foreign Policy notes, this is an issue that the Israeli government has been actively avoiding (political participation of Palestineans in the governance of Israel), but does not pursue the pro's and con's of this concept. The comment section does not discuss the issue much, either, which is regrettable because I rarely see this position debated in "serious policy circles". While the Palestinians naturally have a right to pursue their own state, isn't it reasonable as well to argue (without denying Palestinian identity, as Santorum does in the video linked above) that Palestinians should have some voice in Israeli policy until they get their own state? Why should Palestinian influence only extend to the Occupied Territories when the Israeli government regularly makes decisions that effect Palestinian lives, from curfews to embargoes, to travel restrictions and more? It is a basic axiom of modern democracy that parties who are subject to the impact of decisions should play a role in decisionmaking.

As a corollary, where the Taliban was accused of subjugating women in Afghanistan, the United States advocates for (and attained) an inclusion in the new Afghan constitution that required women to hold a certain percentage of the seats in the Afghan legislature. Yet who would argue that a certain number of seats in the Knesset should be reserved for Palestinians, who do not share the same rights as Israeli citizens within territory Israel controls? Short of this, shouldn't Palestinians be able to vote for who should serve in the Knesset when laws passed therein inevitably affect many areas of Palestinian life and they are currently without a state of their own (with all due respect to the Palestinian Authority, which has been recognized in some international circles, although not fully recognized as a state)?

This is probably all an academic exercise, of course, since this course of action does not seem to be particularly popular among Palestinians or Israelis (although I would welcome information that indicates the opposite, just for my own enlightenment).

The Third Party Spoiler Argument

2011-11-21T20:32:00.000-08:00

Every four years, progressives are urged to line up behind a Democratic candidate that may share some (but not all) of their ideals, because the Republican alternative is far worse. Naturally, these progressives are also urged not to vote for a progressive third party candidate that may align with most of their policy priorities, based on the "boogieman argument" that Ralph Nader spoiled the 2000 election for Al Gore (who wound up beating Bush by half a million votes, but lost the electoral count). I bothered to look at the state vote totals for the 2000 election again recently. Out of every state where Bush won the popular vote, there are only three where Gore would have won if he got some (and, in two cases, most) of Nader's votes: Iowa (2 electoral votes), New Hampshire (4 electoral votes) and most importantly Florida (25 electoral votes), where a few hundred Nader votes would have theoretically pushed Gore over the top for a nationwide electoral vote lead.

There are a few problems with this theory: (1) The Republicans are accused of widespread voter fraud in Florida in 2000, so it presumes the votes would ever be fairly counted in Gore's favor (2) It assumes that people who voted for Nader would ever vote for Gore, rather than stay home (or write in Nader or some third party's name). Considering all the accusations that flew around about voter irregularities, point number one is quite serious (plenty of Dems still argue that not only did the Supreme Court rob Gore, but there were loads of sheisty ballot fraud going on throughout Florida). Point two is just as significant: Gore got 49% of the vote in Florida and it's entirely possible that the votes he got are all that he could get (he was never considered the most charismatic candidate). Out of a population of 15 million total, roughly six million people voted in 2000. Assuming that some votes were lost to fraud, faulty machines, prior felony records leading to disenfranchisement, or lack of interest in politics generally, it's just as likely that the Nader voters might either stay at home or register a write-in protest vote as vote for Gore.

Did anyone ever bother to actually dig up an exit poll of 2000 election Nader voters in Florida to ask? Probably not. The New York Times ran a story that for some peculiar reason cited an exit poll of California Nader voters that said roughly half of them would have voted for Gore had Nader not been on the ballot (Gore won California handily). The writer in that same article acknowledges the veracity of a New Hampshire exit poll of Nader voters (cited therein by Nader) that indicated roughly half of them would have thrown their support behind Bush had Nader not been on the ballot. Surely someone did an exit poll on the 97,000 Nader voters in Florida, but The Times seemingly didn't bother to unearth it. Perhaps it's easier to just keep the Nader spoiler meme going than try to actually drum up empirical data.

side note 1: No one that I have been able to uncover has asked how many votes Buchanan siphoned from Bush on the right (and how he still beat Gore in the states where he did, despite the presence on Buchanan campaigning to the right of him).

side note 2: A blog entry that does not cite traditional sources claims that half of the registered Democratic voters in Florida did not vote at all, which would seem to indicate that Gore's real problem was his GOTV effort.

side note 3: Not enough Democratic pundits have criticized the Gore campaign decision to only seek recounts in certain counties instead of statewide. The crux of the US Supreme Court victory for Bush was that this selective re-counting violated his 14th Amendment rights, whereas seeking a statewide recount would not have been vulnerable to such an argument.

A False Pro-1% Argument

2011-10-27T01:12:00.000-07:00

So, I ran into someone on Twitter who posted this video of CEO Peter Schiff confronting pro-99% demonstrators at Occupy Wall Street. The only problem is, Schiff is holding (and hogging) the mic the whole time, often taking it away from people as they are in the middle of salient points, not addressing valid points yelled off-camera, and failing to account for any nuance in tax policy or the criticism of government complicity with corporate interests articulated by the pro-99% demonstrators.

Schiff fails to include several key points in his analysis:

(1) Earned income is not the sole basis for determining the final tax any individual ends up paying when his or her return is completed (any debate about the fairness of the tax code has to center around "effective tax rate", the percentage of income one winds up paying when income comes from various streams (sales of stock, dividend income, rental income, etc) and after various deductions have been taken (too many to list here). This is the crux of billionaire Warren Buffett's argument that he should pay a higher *effective* tax rate than his secretary, which he currently does not. Seeing Schiff blow off Buffett, who is clearly a more successful investor than Schiff, as if Buffett's opinion on this key economic matter is invalid, is both comical and sad.

(2) Any argument that a change in tax policy will affect job creation immediately fails when one looks at the job creation rate and the rate of entrepreneurial growth during times of higher tax rates for millionaires. If the tax rate was the sole determiner of economic incentive, every post-1913 American industrialist in the 20th Century would have sought their fortunes in some other country after the income tax was first established. Instead, the five decades after the income tax was established saw more expansion of American corporate wealth than the prior 137 years combined (even with the Great Depression in the middle of it!). The economic environment in this country: infrastructure (roads, fire, police), transparency (banking regulation, securities regulation), rule of law and availability of capital are unparalleled virtually anywhere else in the world. Changing the tax code alone will never cause any of this growth to grind to a halt and arguably won't affect any future entrepreneurial growth at all, in light of the entrepreneurial growth we experienced during the five decades following the ratification of the 16th Amendment (the foundation of the income tax as we understand it). The marginal tax rate for a single person earning over $550,000 in 1971 was 70%! If this didn't discourage future entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (who were old enough to remember that rate) from dreaming of being successful businessmen, what rate could?

I could spend the better part of a decade deconstructing Schiff's points, but I think I have gone far enough.

Sacrilege? Why Black Voters Should Support A Primary Challenge to Obama

2011-09-18T00:23:00.000-07:00

I left the following comment in response to an entry published on the Angry Black Lady blog disparaging the proposed third party challenge that Cornel West and Ralph Nader are organizing against Barack Obama in 2012.

You have to factor in history when you have these discussions. Hillary Clinton was polling around 70% with black people at this point in the 2008 election (i.e. roughly 14 months from election day). Obama trounced her in the primaries (taking greater and greater shares of the black vote as the primaries rolled on). No one is unbeatable and no one politician has a lock on the black vote nationally. Obama's poll numbers with black people are already dropping. I have seen polls with that number in the 70s as recently as roughly a week ago.

The real problem for Nader and West is, they should have been planning this primary challenge, with a candidate in place, since 2010. Whoever was going to run should have been on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire since at least spring of this year.

In terms of the tone of this piece, I urge you (and others who agree with you) *not* to assume that (1) black people will vote as a bloc for Obama (2) Nader and West don't have legitimate policy differences with the President (3) progressives (and the black people (progressive and not) who *aren't* supporting Obama in polls) don't have legitimate policy differences with the President and (4) policy differences with the President aren't worthy of being respected, just like every view in a democracy that doesn't overtly advocate for the oppression of one (or more) group(s) of people deserves some measure of respect, even as we disagree. I don't see how calling someone an "asshat" is useful to the political discourse at all. Regarding Nader's usage of the loaded Uncle Tom term, I don't expect him to apologize to Fox but I would expect him to apologize to *us* (while, at the same time, this lays out clearly the problem of racializing internal arguments that black folk have had internally for years, i.e. the attempt to measure the blackness of one person or another by their policy positions...we built the slippery road that Nader slid down (even though I would argue we have a group prerogative to determine which members of our group are adhering to an internal code (no Reconstruction Black Codes pun) that Nader, as a racial outsider to our group, lacks) (leaving aside debates about whether phenotypical traits are even valid principles to organize around, period)).

The more important question for black voters should be what course of action serves our short term and long term interests? The historical precedent of electing a Black President has been set. Do we need to vote as a bloc for a Black President who waited until his term was 75% over to propose a jobs bill when black unemployment was rising through his whole term and never seriously addressing the foreclosure crisis when it let to a roughly 50% decline in black net worth, according to some claims? I would say no. Everyone should vote their conscience. The biggest wake up call to the Democratic Party would be if they lose any sizable portion (5% or better) of the ever-faithful black vote in a re-election campaign led by a black candidate.

Since the "Bullet Or The Ballot" speech, if not earlier, black critical thinkers have assailed the tendency of black people to vote overwhelmingly for one party (it used to be the Republicans but switched to the Democrats, particularly from the 60s forward, as they offered more policy proposals that directly addressed our community concerns). When our support was in flux like it was in the 60s, we had Republican presidents like Nixon creating the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, because it still seemed like such overtures might earn (or retain) a vote or two. We lost our seat at that GOP table, from a policy perspective. I don't think losing a seat at a prospective third party table is smart politics. If Obama wins with 51% of the vote, a progressive-libertarian third party coalition takes between 3-5% (ideally 5%) and a Republican candidate loses with 44-47% of the vote (likely given Obama's organization and fundraising), this is a win-win (particularly if the third party coalition West and Nader proposes pulls in the magic 5% that gets them access to matching federal funds in the next election cycle).

If anything, considering rumblings from the right to form a third party that will dilute the Republican vote, black voters who aren't Republican or conservative *should* be seeking to dilute the Libertarian vote with a progressive-Libertarian alliance, so that the conservatives don't have complete control over the Libertarian movement and seize the crucial 5% of the vote for whatever third party *they* assemble.

This is chess, not checkers.

(cross-posted to my blog Tell A Lie Vision, because I didn't do all this writing for nothing...LOL)

Washington Post Tunisian Coverage Racialized To Absurd Extent

2011-01-15T03:13:00.000-08:00

It is hard to write in one blog entry how deeply flawed the recent Washington Post article on the Tunisian uprising is.

A good start might be to examine the bizarre aside where the authors of the article describe Tunisian's "instinctive hospitality", an odd overgeneralization for an ancient state comprised of ten million people (all ten million of whom, according to the Post, would likely instinctively, without thinking, show me a great deal of hospitality should I arrive in their homeland). This stereotype is almost comical in the larger context of an article about a country run by an autocrat for over twenty years, who was forced to flee after killing dozens of protesters (hardly hospitable of him, despite his "instinctive hospitality", no?).

The Post goes on to paint the entire region of Northern Africa as Muslim extremists with the cast-off description of this hundred million-plus populated area as "a region often unsettled by Islamist extremism". If North Africa, as a region, was "often unsettled" by Muslim extremism, we'd be seeing global terrorism at a magnitude of a hundred times what it is currently, W. Post. This overstatement is only made worse by the Post's assertion that Tunisia (again, ruled by a dictator for over twenty years) is a "haven of tolerance" in comparison to the rest of North Africa, according to this (hopefully?) hastily written Post article. If being ruled over by a dictator who imprisons dissidents and kills protesters for twenty years is a "haven of tolerance", I suppose the opinion of the Post regarding such other North African states as Morocco must be simply awful.

Later in the article, the authors describe a man who sets himself on fire to protest an alleged unfair government taking of his private property, then segues into the next paragraph with the opener "From there violence spread quickly...", without stopping to explain how setting *oneself* on fire is actually violence as traditionally understood, let alone "violence" that "spreads" in any way that Western media understands the term "spreading violence". If this were the case, The Post should categorize the sky high suicide rate of American G.I.s in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters of war as "violence" that has "spread quickly" over the past ten years. One could not imagine such a categorization; suicide by Westerners is an act of desperation, yet somehow these same acts in Third World countries are categorized as acts of violence?

This is not to mention the description of the destruction of property owned by the family of dictator Ben Ali as "protest violence". One can be violent towards objects? This is capitalist philosophy run amok, but that is another entry altogether.

Why Is The Guardian Supporting A Coup In Ivory Coast Turmoil?

2011-01-11T02:34:00.000-08:00

Why is The Guardian suggesting that a military coup is acceptable in the Ivory Coast due to its current post-election power struggle? Would this publication ever suggest that a military coup would be an acceptable answer to a political power struggle in a European state, such as the recent turmoil in Greece over government fiscal policy? It can safely be said that the answer historically has always been "no". How then can The Guardian suggest a military coup as a possible solution to turmoil in the Ivory Coast? The comment later in this article that Kenya had a peaceful recent election when both major candidates were from the same ethnic group conveniently overlooks the British government's historical role in playing ethnic groups against one another during the colonial period in Kenya. It is sad that European publications have a consistent track record of advocating political solutions for political problems in African countries that they would never suggest in response to political problems in European countries.

Post Continues Misleading About Wiki Founder Charges

2010-12-06T18:56:00.001-08:00

Without seeking comment from any Swedish authorities regarding their investigation, The Post continues to spread the unproven falsehood that Wikileaks founder Assange is a sexual predator, by claiming in an article published today that Assange is being sought for questioning regarding the "sexual assault" of two women. The Post frames this story as a simple sexual assault, as contrasted with other more nuanced press accounts, such as one by UK publication The Guardian, outlined a complicated case wherein a Swedish prosecutor dropped one rape charge against Assange and reduced another (only to be overruled by a superior a week later, leading to a reinstatement of charges) and that both women admit the sex was consensual (a fact that the Post neglects to mention until near the end of its article). The Post then muddies the issue by stating that (according to an unnamed Swedish source) the women "conceded that sex with Assange started as consensual but allege that it later became non-consensual". Yet The Post was not able to get (or declined to publish) more details from their unnamed source about what exactly led to the purported withdrawal of consent, presumptively in mid-act?

Perhaps The Post decided not to explain the issue further because polling shows almost 50% of Americans have difficulty equating withdrawal of consent with rape, which would ruin what amounts to an attempt by the Post to present the matter as an open-and-shut case among an American readership that would be confused by extenuating details if the paper cited accounts that Assange is allegedly being accused of continuing with sexual activity post-consent after a condom broke (in one instance) and after a condom somehow was removed (in the other). Even those accounts (none of which are based on quotes from the women involved) may not tell the whole story, as other independent media outlets have reported that the charges in question are based merely on Assange engaging in consensual sex without wearing a condom at all, which is apparently an act punishable in Sweden with two years imprisonment (a state of affairs that would no doubt confuse the average American reader, whose definition of rape and sexual assault involves the absence of consent, not the absence of a prophylactic).

The Post also naturally neglected to report on (or investigate claims that) the issue is further muddied by apparent accounts that after the alleged assaults occurred, Swedish prosecutors got ahold of texts and Twitter messages celebrating sexual liaisons with Assange written by the women involved (both named in other publications but who I shall keep anonymous until their accusations are resolved).

This is not to mention the decision by the writer in this article to only focused on one leak (regarding American installations sensitive to attack) out of the thousands of leaks Wikileaks has provided, an act that would be oversimplified even if one decided to label it an oversimplification.

WikiLeaks Article In Post Glosses Over Censorship Concerns?

2010-12-04T21:01:00.001-08:00

The Washington Post unsurprisingly limited its coverage of claims that government leak site Wikileaks was being targeted by the U.s. Government to one quote in its three page article on problems besieging the site, since that publication often acts as the bullhorn of official Washington (especially during the run-up to wars, such as when they re-published with little criticism the WMD claims in Iraq).

Although the U.S. government, embarassed by round after round of leaked documents provided by Wikileaks, is the most likely suspect behind several denial-of-service attacks, the author of this Post article laughably stated:

WikiLeaks has been brought down numerous times this week by what appear to be denial-of-service attacks. In a typical such attack, remote computers commandeered by rogue programs bombard a website with so many data packets that it becomes overwhelmed and unavailable to visitors. Pinpointing the culprits is difficult. The attacks are relatively easy to mount and can be performed by amateurs.

Well, sure, a lone hacker *could* perform a denial-of-service attack, but the U.S. government has the most reason to perform these acts. Why no U.S. official was even asked about whether the attacks were government-sponsored is a basic indicator of how much the "fourth estate" has merely morphed into the lapdog of the establishment. At this point, corporate media will not even ask incendiary questions and print the predictable (and often later proved false) denial.

Racialized Thinking: Bringing Up Race For No Reason

2010-11-08T18:18:00.000-08:00

There is a shade of difference between racialized thinking and racist thought, usually the former occurs with the absence of conscious insidious intent. The latter usually involves a negative thought about someone or a group based on their perceived racial identity. Racialized thinking is when race enters someone's thought process for no logical reason.

How does racialized thinking play out?

Let's take a discussion of three movies in a Hollywood film site, variety.com.

In an article on the opening week of three films - Megamind, Due Date, and For Colored Girls - see if you can determine a specific difference in how the audiences for the three films are discussed (they are discussed in the same order as in the article, from highest grossing to lowest).

Megamind:

"Megamind," which scored an A- CinemaScore rating, played evenly with auds aged both over and under 25, with slight preference among women (57%).

Due Date:

With males constituting 53% of its audience, "Due Date" saw 59% of its opening come from moviegoers under 35.

For Colored Girls:

Lionsgate's "For Colored Girls" skewed heavily toward adult African American females, with 87% of moviegoers over 25, 81% African-American and 82% female.

Why is race only discussed for one of the three films? Unsurprisingly, the film with the predominantly black cast and black director? I have never seen Variety make a point of noting when an audience "skews heavily" towards a white audience.

In some ways, this is a subtle way of indicating that certain groups are "the other", implicitly making white "normative" (it's a reflection of the instance I noted in one of the screenshot comments in my prior entry, where I point out to an Atlantic commenter that he/she inexplicably distinguished between "people" and "the black community", as if these were mutually exclusive groups). There is an odd tendency in the mainstream media to present matters without race involving white people, but to always point out race where it involves other people. This is racialized thinking.

Accepting The Lie Even As You Fight For Truth

2010-11-05T11:38:00.000-07:00

It's rare that I criticize the same media source twice in so close a time frame, but Ta-Nanehisi Coates has struck again with another highly inflammatory quote hidden in the middle of a piece on policing, worse than his attempt at attributing what he imagined to be Malcolm X's gender position into a statement about Malcolm's definitive thoughts regarding women.

The first paragraph of the piece is fine, but the second paragraph is where Coates starts going off the rails. First, he inexplicably states that he initially ignored reports of NYPD engaging in disproportionately stopping and frisking Blacks and Latinos to meet citation quotas (and the story of a NYPD officer who alleges he was institutionalized for failing the meet quota). After this puzzling confession, Coates suddenly (and even more inexplicably) states "If [B]lacks and Latinos commit most of the crimes [in New York City], it stands to reason they'll be overrepresented among the stop and frisks." There are huge sections of New York City that are almost entirely white (particularly in Staten Island and Queens), so how could anyone with any remote understanding of the demographics there believe that Black and Latino offenders comprise the majority of criminal acts *committed* in New York City (as opposed to the number or arrests or convictions, which are controlled by the discretion of officers who arrest and prosecutors who file charges)?

Starting a hypothetical with the words "If blacks and Latinos commit most of the crimes..." is as wildly unprovable as starting a hypothetical with the words "If the government ships in all the drugs...". One is a widely accepted and unproven stereotype and the other is a mass-media derided and unproven conspiracy theory. Coates, as a mainstream journalist, would never proffer the latter premise, but is comfortable proffering the former. Why? No study has definitively proven that Blacks (capital B, by the way, Mr. Coates) and Latinos commit most of the crimes in any American city, because there is no reliable way to track every crime committed in any geographical area. Any impartial (read: non-racialized) observer is intelligent enough to realize (1) that crime includes every act prohibited by local, state and federal statutes in a locality and (2) that in New York City, Blacks and Latinos could not possibly comprise the majority of the people violating those statutes, which criminalize everything from insider trading to jaywalking. So, why would Coates present such a ludicrous hypothetical?

When confronted on the issue in the comments section, Coates confessed that "obvious falsehoods crept into my thinking", but he does not endeavor to explicitly state the falsehood of the claim that "Blacks and Latinos commit most of the crimes [in NYC]", nor does he explain the (perhaps more troubling) issue of how this falsehood crept into his thinking at all.

These questions don't even begin to reach larger societal questions, such as how such a falsehood could be presented, without stating that it was false, in a piece on a respected media site. Or how none of the persons who commented on the piece (present company excluded) responded to the presence of such a bold-faced lie or challenged it, despite a massive number of responses.

Update: He banned me from the comment section after I thoroughly, yet politely, deconstructed the shortcomings of his piece there. My response that was deleted and apparently led to me being banned went as follows:

The post is weakened by your explicit failure to *explicitly* note that the statement "Blacks and Latinos commit most of the crimes in NYC" is a falsehood. The piece would be strengthened considerably if you noted that in brackets somehow. Otherwise, your piece presents, unchallenged, the same falsehood that leads to disproportionate arrest and prosecution of Black and Latino citizens in New York, feeding a monster of a lie that leads to the problem you decry as the central theme of your piece.

Absent that explicit denunciation of that statement as a falsehood, the source of your shame is also a mystery, beyond some inexplicable initial decision to ignore the first wave of reports on this story. Stating directly that Blacks and Latinos *do not* commit the majority of crimes explains why focusing inordinate police resources against these communities, out of proportion with their actual criminal activity, is both morally wrong and counterproductive to the maximum success of any crime-fighting strategy.

I just realized something: funnily enough, even in this reply, you do not explicitly state the idea that Blacks and Latinos commit the majority of the crimes in NYC is a falsehood. You just say some unnamed falsehood crept into your thinking. Sigh.

Or view it as a screenshot (oh, he didn't think I'd be able to preserve that?):

American censorship and refusal to debate, even politely, at its finest. If you can't win, find a way to stop the other side from speaking. Sad.

Ancestor Worship vs Context vs Blemishing Legacies

2010-11-03T11:50:00.000-07:00

There is a fine line to walk when one revisits the legacy of a beloved historical figure. In the black community, we have often seen our beloved figures demonized in the press, so a defensive reaction to protect those figures from "attack" is completely understandable. Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor at the Atlantic, endeavored to take another look at revered Black leader Malcolm X's political beliefs in a multi-part series on theatlantic.com. After reading his piece on Malcolm's gender politics, which focused on a handful of passages in the four hundred-plus page Autobiography of Malcolm X (which in itself only tells part of the story of Malcolm's politics, inherently, due to space limitations). After reading his piece, I tweeted to Coates that a few passages were not sufficient to explain Malcolm's entire gender philosophy. He urged me to blog a response, which I now endeavor to do.

The first passage from the autobiography that Coates relies on to form his opinion on Malcolm's gender politics involves Malcolm explaining what johns told prostitutes working for him when he was a pimp about their wives. This is third hand information, based on a sample size of men who frequent prostitutes, hardly a good source for inferring the personal beliefs of a revered figure like Malcolm.

The second passage cited by Coates mostly involves Malcolm reflecting what prostitutes think of men, also not pertinent to Malcolm's personal views, but there is a bombshell at the end of the passage, presumptively from Malcolm directly (we'll assume Haley transcribed this correctly): "All women, by their nature, are fragile and weak: they are attracted to the male in whom they see strength."

Malcolm wasn't known for qualifying his statements and that one is as overarching as a generalization can get.

Unfortunately, Coates doesn't spend much time ruminating on that quote and, even more unfortunately, spends no time at all putting it in context with the time in which this statement was made, before the modern feminist movement and at a time when male/female relationships were still being placed in the context of man-as-breadwinner/woman-as-dutiful-housewife throughout the mass media. Would Malcolm have made the same statement in 2010 after decades of feminist protest, writing and scholarship and a sea change in media representation of women? That is doubtful, in my mind (but we'll never know, unfortunately).

Coates then goes on to make a huge generalization before presenting the next passage in his piece, stating as an introductory remark: "I think this passage is fairly typical of Malcolm's attitude". It is hard to determine how someone who never met Malcolm and is relying solely on one book written by the source "as told to" a third party (Haley) can reliably draw an inference on whether a passage is "fairly typical" of the attitude of a man who passed away 45 years ago. Stretching logic at this level should never be acceptable in a major media outlet. In any case, the prefaced passage in question continues the theme of the prior quoted passage about male domination:

Now, Islam has very strict laws and teachings about women, the core of them being that the true nature of man is to be strong, and a woman's true nature is to be weak, and while a man must at all times respect his woman, at the same time he needs to understand that he must control her if he expects to get her respect.

It is unclear whether Malcolm's interpretation of Islam above is filtered through the teaching of the Nation of Islam (whose beliefs were not in Malcolm's lifetime considered mainstream Islamic interpretation by any source I can uncover). What seems more clear, however, is that his understanding of gender roles fits in quite well with the media portrayal of gender roles in his time and, if minimal female participation in Congress and most positions of power at that time are any indication, this interpretation appears to be the mainstream male view of the mid-sixties. At this point in his piece, Coates briefly places Malcolm's statement in historical context ("It was not an atypical thought at the time."), then abruptly implies, conclusively and without proof, that Malcolm's views were somehow harsher than the contemporary views of the time ("But from The Autobiography, there is this sense that, even in the Nation, Malcolm was seen as particularly harsh in his views of women."). This conclusory statement is made without citing any evidence that Malcolm was considered the "harsh(est minister in the Nation) in his views on women" or whether his views were harsher than those held by other popular figures (spoken or unspoken) in the general milieu of sexism that pervaded popular American thought at the time. Considering that Malcolm was actively training ministers at mosques throughout the Nation of Islam infrastructure, it's hard to accord second-hand accounts that Malcolm was harsh with the conclusion that Malcolm was the harshest to some unreasonable degree (it would be more likely to assume that the ministers Malcolm trained would be fairly in line with his own speaking style).

Near the end of his piece, Coates makes two leaps of logic that are almost wholly unrelated to the text of the Autobiography. His first leap of logic involves Coates essentially putting words into Malcolm's mouth about "detesting" dominant women, words that are not based on statements made in the Autobiography or any other source, when Coates states, "...his older sister Ella...is exactly the kind of 'domineering' and 'demanding' woman whom he seemingly detests." How can an argument be made that Malcolm "seemingly detest[ed]" women of an independent character, when the cited passages only seem to state Malcolm's belief in patriarchal family structure, a structure generally promoted throughout mass media portrayals of gender at that time? There is a stark difference between reinforcing popular patriarchial thought of one's time and "detesting" independent-minded women. Coates covers this distance in a single leap of logic, without seeking further sources to back his claim.

Coates makes his second leap by arguing that while Malcolm effusively praises his sister Ella in the Autobiography, he does so because "[i]t was almost as if to Malcolm, Ella wasn't really a woman." This, again, is based on no statement in the book or any other source. It is purely drawn from Coates' imagination. It is fine to imagine what one's historical heroes might have thought, as long as you attribute these musings to your own imagination, not to the person about whom you are imagining.

Coates' journey to re-contextualize Malcolm might be more fruitful if he seeks more sources than the Autobiography and perhaps interviews people who knew Malcolm, in order to form a more comprehensive view of the man of whom he writes. A man as complex as Malcolm X deserves a more in-depth analysis than what was presented in Coates' piece, especially before one comes to the damning conclusions Coates reached in his piece regarding Malcolm's gender viewpoint.

Addendum: Coates is an old comrade of mine from my Young African Writers Association (YAWA) days at Howard University. The YAWA experience centers around constructive criticism and I write in that spirit, so readers should respect him as such. Steel sharpens steel, however, and legacies must be contextualized properly, so here we are.

Does Political Leaning Bend Logic?

2010-09-21T17:19:00.000-07:00

I don't know the political leanings of Stephen D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, the authors of Freakonomics, but they make some interesting assumptions in their book and fail to challenge some assumptions they present uncritically that seem illogical on their face. They come out against ideas generally supported by the right (for example, by challenging the utility of capital punishment as a crime deterrent), but they make interesting inclusions and omissions of fact in different situations where one of the factors that changes is the race of the person(s) discussed.

The most striking quote that they present without criticizing its underpinnings is a quote in the book from an economist named Gary Becker who (on page 121) says, in part, "African-Americans and Hispanics commit a disproportionate share of felonies". Note the use of the verb "commit" (noting there is no accurate record of how many crimes are actually committed, since a sizable number of crimes inherently go undetected/unpunished) versus the use of the phrase "are convicted of" (which can be objectively proven with statistics regularly gathered by the Department of Justice). How could one calculate who commits every felony that occurs in America, absent arrests or convictions? You can't, unless you're omniscient. So, how did a pair of economists who spend an entire book undercutting "conventional wisdom" with unblinking logic fail to note that Mr. Becker's claim was blatantly unprovable and, worse, quote it as fact? This is the typical blindside created in a society inundated with racism where certain racial stereotypes become so accepted ("Blacks/Latinos are more likely to be criminals") that when these unproven assertions are repeated even ordinarily rational actors may fail to critique them (and, worse, may repeat them).

For the record, there is no set of data that proves African-Americans and Latinos commit a disproportionate share of the felonies committed in America. This should be patently obvious to anyone who considers the number of felonies that may be committed but never reported or even witnessed by anyone other than the criminal(s) engaging in the act (particularly financial crimes such as insider trading, tax evasion, housing discrimination, lending discrimination/redlining, etc, all of which could result in increased felony convictions if our law enforcement agencies had more resources to combat these ills). You can't determine which group is committing a disproportionate share of any set of acts without empirical data showing the overall number of said acts committed; this is simple logic, the same logic generally applied through much of the book.

Other failures in logic are less startling, such as the decision by the authors (in Chapter 3) to attempt to determine the earning level of every crack dealer in the United States from the income generated by one "franchise" of one Chicago street organization, in a 12 square block area in the South Side of Chicago, over four years. Ordinarily, this would be considered too small of a sample size from which to draw a conclusion. Of course, "experts" regularly comment on what is described as the criminal underclass without relying on the type of factual scrutiny reserved for stories about more "respectable" citizens or sectors of society.

Following this mainstream media tradition, where the crimes happen in "respectable" sectors of society, race is not mentioned by the authors at all. In a chapter entitled "Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers", the authors never once mention the race of any of the employees allegedly stealing bagels sold by salesman Paul Feldman at a rate of roughly 11% (more than one out of every ten bagels!). By contrast, the entire chapter dedicated to drug dealing limits its discussion to black inner city drug dealers on the South Side of Chicago (a predominately black neighborhood) whose race is made clear to the reader because they are repeatedly quoted referring to themselves by the n-word (as if the neighborhood cited didn't already codify their race, since "South Side of Chicago" has been transformed into shorthand for "black and poor" by the Chicago and national media). Even noting the location of the drug dealer story as the South Side of Chicago is irrelevant to the larger point being made (the economics of the drug trade). Interestingly, the researcher who lived with the drug dealers on the South Side is name checked by ethnicity (Indian) upon his introduction, for no apparent reason. Feldman, curiously enough, is not described by race, nor is CPS CEO Arne Duncan. Duncan is white (Google him). Feldman has a German surname. Draw your own conclusions from this limited sample size and paucity of information about how the authors racialize their writing.

Any conclusion you might draw from that sample size and limited data is as credible as the conclusion the authors drew about bagel thieves. When discussing how the criminal occurrence of bagel theft decreased from 13% to 11% after the September 11th attacks (p. 47), the authors pontificate that this drop may have been due to "a patriotic element" or "a more general surge in empathy", although the equally likely scenario is that because "many of Feldman's customers are affiliated with national security", these workers were aware that surveillance of their worksites dramatically increased after September 11th, dissuading potential thieves who feared detection. Why are former criminals (the 2%) without a racial designation denoted in Freakonomics assigned such a beneficial motivation for their decision to cease their stealing ways? Why do the authors fail to identify any of the companies housing these thieves, but the South Side of Chicago, as a locale, is named, when neither location has any correlation to the crime being committed? After all, it would be different the authors had to tell an anecdote about coca leaves, that mainly grow in certain areas, but you can sell crack (or steal bagels) virtually anywhere, so why name one setting but not others?

When the authors make these sort of choices, is there something that can logically be deduced about their political leanings and beliefs?

They did go against the right wing viewpoint about capital punishment, after all. I wonder how they feel about liberals?

Maybe the answer can be found where the authors make a wildly unprovable claim on the bottom of page 125, where they state inexplicably "In some cases, hiring additional police was considered a violation of the era's liberal aesthetic", referring to the time period between 1960 and 1985. This is unprovable for any number of reasons. One, the author cannot cite any source wherein a unified (or any) liberal position against additional police hiring is held. Two, if "liberal aestethic(s)" controlled policy decisions from 1960 to 1985, why did the Vietnam War last so long, since liberals were vehemently opposed to that war? How did the nation's law enforcement apparatus investigate, entrap and/or assassinate so many liberal figures with impunity in this era? Why were Republican presidents in office for the majority of this period (13 years of 25)? In short, what type of inherent political bias could lead the authors to make such a claim without citing to any authority as if it were a truism?

The authors then go on to conclude, without much evidence, that a 50% decrease in police hiring and "leniency in the other half of the criminal justice system", created a "strong positive incentive for criminals", allegedly leading to a spike in crime rates. The authors talk about increased incentive to commit crime due to decreased police hiring, but cite no corresponding drop in arrests to back their claim that reduced hiring "translated into a roughly equal decline in the probability that a given criminal would be caught" (p. 126). Scrupulous with their math in other areas of the book, the authors offer essentially no mathematical data at all to prove this alleged correlation. The first problem with their assertion is, in order to determine probability that a criminal would be caught, the authors would have to know both the total amount of crime committed and the number of criminals arrested for crimes ("caught"). Without citing either data set (total crimes committed or total arrests), the authors cannot possibly believe they have proven their point about the falling probability of arrest for a criminal between 1960-1985. Further weakening their argument, the authors neither cite what the crime rates were from 1960 to 1985, what crime rates were prior to this period, nor whether crime rates remained at some constant level from 1960-1985 (with demographic changes factored in as variables), in order to establish their central thesis. Do they seriously expect readers to believe there was a spike in crime between, say, 1959 and 1960 without any numerical data? Even when discussing an area limited to the state of New York, the authors fail to note the effects of such landmark acts as the Rockefeller drug laws (which greatly increased the penalty for drug possession in New York) in their calculus of determining what affects crime rates, even though the Rockefeller laws were passed in the middle of their mythical supposedly "liberal aesthetic"-ruled period between 1960-1985.

This is not even to discuss the problem of viewing side by side both the authors' acceptance of the unprovable assertion that African-Americans and Latinos commit a disproportionate amount of the felonies in our country and the authors' argument (from pages 115-145) that legalized abortion post-Roe led to the steep drop in crime in the 1990s. Read together, these two ideas seem to imply that killing a sizable proportion of African-American and Latino fetuses before they are born is a good crime prevention tactic. Freakonomics, indeed.

Post Script: Did I mention that the persons identified as black in the book include a crack gang, an abusive lover who knocks a woman's teeth out and an academic failure? How can such a selection of characters amongst a set of 30-plus million people be justified in a non-racialized way? Ah, I neglect to mention an anecdote about Kareem Abdul-Jabaar (not identified by race, but whose race is obviously known to most of the American population). And the naming chapter identifies five more characters as black: a police detective, a felon with three dozen arrests, a black teen girl arrested for "bringing men into the home while her mother was at work" (the sole black female in the book just happens to be sexually promiscuous, a traditional black female stereotype), and an economist who pushes a still unproven theory that disproportionate poor test scores amongst blacks is explained by their fear of "acting white". So, that's a crack gang, an abuser, a long-time felon, a promiscuous black teen girl, an intellectual failure, a police detective, an economist and a basketball player.

Mathematically, except for the inclusion of the economist, the authors succeeded in including almost every black stereotype in their book (with police detective and the economist being the sole exceptions, although the economist is pushing a borderline racist theory and the black police detective is becoming a "positive" stereotypical role as it appears to be one of the main roles a black lead actor can get in a film: cop or criminal). Out of seven persons in the book identified as black people, five are criminals. The one person identified as a Latino is a drug trafficker (Oscar Blandon). Is it mathematically possible that these were the only Black and Latino people in the entire country that the authors could chose to profile, if they had a racially unbiased approach to presenting their information? Or is something else behind their curious selection of persons to profile? You do the math on that one.

When Sampling Goes Wrong: Reducing Struggle To Zero

2010-07-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

One of my all-time favorite Doors songs is a rocking tune by the name of "Five to One", where Jim Morrison outlines the theory that the youth in the world outnumber the older ruling class by five to one and predicts a victory over the current ruling class because "they've got the guns, but we've got the numbers"! Few rock hits have been as political in recent memory (due respect to Rage Against The Machine), so I recently reflected with some regret at Kanye West's decision to sample "Five to One" for Jay-Z's "Takeover", where he wastes the propelling soundscape behind his vocals to belittle then rival rappers Nas and Mobb Deep, reducing a song about youth uprising to a petty call for his record label to take over the rap industry. Perhaps the karmic forces controlling the universe decided this was too absurd to accept, because Jay-Z's record label (Roc-a-Fella) wound up imploding a few years after "Takeover" came out.

To add an additional bit of historic irony to the proceedings, one might care to note that Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was assassinated by Chicago police in his sleep the same day that Jay-Z was born. This has to go down in history as the worst soul-for-soul trade in human history. We lost a leader who could unite street organizations in Chicago with progressive organizations from multiple races (Black, Latino, Native American and White) in his original Rainbow Coalition and we got a guy who has amassed a massive fortune mostly based on rhyming about misogyny and the drug trade, selling liquor and overpriced clothes, and generally being as apolitical as possible even as his music became less openly destructive. One can only imagine what Fred Hampton could have accomplished politically from 1969-2010, as sadly contrasted with what Jay-Z has failed to accomplish politically in that time. Big up to him for doing that one MTV special on clean water in Africa and that one verse song on the levee failure in New Orleans, though. One verse for a tragedy, three verses for a rap battle. Better than no verses, I suppose. Sigh.

160 Years Late, Someone Goes To Jail For Slavery

2010-07-17T21:41:00.001-07:00

This country being built on slave labor, the recent fervor over (and spanking new slavery synonym) "human trafficking" warms my cynical heart. No one trying to stop this admittedly horrible practice seems to be on board with the reparations movement, but there's plenty of outrage in this media account of a West African man who (in what some would say is historic tradition) enslaved some poor souls from his continent and brought them here to work for nothing, under fear of physical assault, i.e. the American Way circa 1492-1865. Unfortunately for this guy, he wasn't born without melanin and with property 300 years ago; he could have been carved into Mount Rushmore.

The Post Acknowledges The Obvious at Last

2009-05-24T22:29:00.000-07:00

As I have written before here, the "controversy" about whether we can try terrorists or house them in U.S. prisons is absurd because we have already tried and imprisoned international terrorists in our criminal justice system.

The Post finally acknowledged this in a recent piece explaining that almost three dozen international terrorists are held in federal prison currently (although I wouldn't be surprised if the total number wound up being higher if you included narcoterrorists and persons affiliated with terrorist groups who did not personally engage in terrorist acts on U.S. soil).

The same congressional representatives (including Harry Reid) fretting about housing terrorists in U.S. prisons had no problem trying, convicting and incarcerating folks like the first World Trade Center bombers, Timothy McVeigh and (an in my opinion framed up) Jose Padilla (the cooked up charges of radioactive bomb conspiracy of which he was charged never seeing a day in court, after those charges were dropped).

Well, at least someone at the Post put their thinking cap on.

Democrats and Republicans Slowly Go Insane

2009-05-20T00:53:00.000-07:00

The Post continues its discussion on how Democrats are incapable of maintaining any promises to their progressive base, in this case illustrating their inability to close Guantanamo Bay and actually try terrorism suspects (like we tried the first World Trade Center bombers). The Post naturally fails to interview any third party progressive voices that would illustrate the insanity of this discussion, instead letting the issue remain an echo chamber between the two corporatist "major" parties, the Democrats and Republicans, both of whom would rather trot out focus group tested cliches than actually attempt to make sense and honor the American jurisprudential tradition.

"We spent hundreds of millions of dollars building an appropriate facility with all security precautions on Guantanamo to try these cases," Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) said Sunday on ABC News's "This Week." Webb added, "I do not believe they should be tried in the United States."

Look at this logic: we spent so much money on incarcerating these people without providing them a proper trial, that we can't possibly provide them with a fair trial now. Yet, the Post prints such patently ludicrous nonsense without providing a platform for a contrarian voice that would point out the absurdity in the above comment.

Or how about this priceless attempt at "logic":

Reid said the Senate will make sure that any final plan includes a prohibition on the transfer of detainees to U.S. prisons. "Can't put them in prison unless you release them," he said.

How Orwellian: prison = release. Oh, I get it, if we give them a fair trial, since we can't prove the guilt of most of the detainees, we'd have to release them. What a tragedy for the bloodthirsty lench mob that wants to hold someone, anyone, in jail for something, regardless of guilt or innocence. We've got to be tough on someone, right?

Where is the sanity?

Indefinite Detention, No Trial

2009-05-15T03:36:00.000-07:00

The corporatist Wall Street Journal often is given the scoop on police state expansions of power because they will report on such expansions uncritically. The trend continued recently when the Journal reported on rumblings that the Obama administration is considering indefinitely holding detainees (i.e. accused terrorists) without trial. This state of affairs is reported as if it is normal without quoting a civil liberties proponent who would frame such an action as lunacy (the ever-present, usually quoted "administration critic" that is quoted whenever such stories are reported in equally corporatist but more centrist publications like the New York Times or the Washington Post). No corporatist paper, of course, would print an alternative view pointing out prior successful federal court prosecutions of accused terrorists who actually committed violent acts on U.S. soil, such as Timothy McVeigh or the original World Trade Center bombers. If the FBI, federal law enforcement, and U.S. attorneys were able to build successful cases against those perpetrators, why has no one in the corporate press questioned why neither the Bush nor the Obama administration is capable of trying cases against the current crop of alleged terrorists?

Is it possible that the cases against the current crop of detainees is paper-thin and/or based on information gathered through torture (such information being inherently unreliable as people might say *anything* to get the torture to stop)? Since our military-intelligence infrastructure is an extension of global corporatist interest (the ultimate bargaining chip, if you will, to enforce multinational corporate will in any arena, globally), corporatist media is wary of presenting criticism of any utilization of force by the military/intelligence system that has intertwined closer than ever since the start of the Global War on Anyone Opposed to U.S. Expansionism (the new way to demonize anyone who opposes corporate interests anywhere, as past revelations of wiretapping of peace activists and other radicals seems to imply).

Since so many detainees committed no acts of violence against U.S. citizens (or anyone), how far are we away from the "thought crime" scenario in "1984"?

So, Now Obama Will Have Filibuster-Proof Majority in the Senate

2009-04-29T08:17:00.000-07:00

So, with the recent party switch of Arlen Spector to the Democratic Party and the projected seating of Al Franken as the Democratic Senator from Minnesota, the Democrats will have 58 seats in the U.S. Senate. Along with the two independents (Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a democratic socialist, and former Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut), both of whom regularly vote parallel to the Democratic caucus on a range of issues, the Democrats essentially now have the 60 votes to prevent a filibuster in the Senate. The filibuster is a procedural tactic that minority parties have historically used when they know they will lose a straight vote on the Senate floor on an issue particularly contentious to their party constituents (or, more likely, the corporate interests to which their party is most indebted). With that magic anti-filibuster number of Democratic and allied senators established, now Obama can be the practical progressive his supporters still believe that he is without fear of Republican obstructionism in the Senate. Let's see what he does with his newfound power.

The only worrying aspect of all this is Joe Lieberman's bordeline insane support of every form of militarism against Arab (and Persian) nations in the Middle East, which means that he may choose to caucus with the Republicans to filibusters attempts to prevent further killing of brown people in that region, even when the initial auspices for doing so are specious, to say the least (lies about non-existent weapons) or start new conflicts based on unsubstantiated allegations that nation-states would (against every proliferation pattern in modern military history*) supply a rogue agent with a nuclear device (as neo-cons allege nonsensically about Iran).

Cross your fingers for sanity.

* No country in the nuclear age has provided nuclear technology to anything other than a fellow nation-state, so why would someone seriously believe the Iranians would give one away to a proxy agent they have no real control over? Who would they give it to, Hezbollah? The Israelis would rain nukes on them in response to any nuclear attack on their soil. I wish people in the corporate media would ask questions that showed any type of understanding of military history, proliferation as regard proxy armies, etc. For example, Reagan didn't give the Contras nuclear submarines (LOL). Nation-states *never* give their most potent weaponry to proxy armies (they sensibly keep them for their own militaries).

The Absurdity of the Afghanistan Policy

2009-04-07T06:44:00.000-07:00

By now, millions of people have seen the footage of individuals allegedly affiliated with the Taliban flogging a young woman, allegedly for exiting a home of a man who was not her husband. Violence of this type is naturally abhorred, but what about the violence inherent in war? Why is there no video of what U.S. forces are doing in Afghanistan and (illegally) in Northwest Pakistan? There is no military solution to abuse against women. You don't call in the Marines to improve gender relations. Imagine if domestic disturbance calls in the U.S. resulted in a military response, where black clad Special Forces invaded a home with flash-bang grenades and M-16s? The thought is it is absurd, so why are people implicitly using this instance of assault to justify the wholesale military occupation of an entire country? Why did people regularly ask about President Bush's exit strategy in Iraq (he had none), yet no one asks about President Obama's exit strategy in Afghanistan (he has none)? Both military adventures burn billions of dollars to no recognizable end. One cannot kill one's way out of political extremism; violence only begets more political extremists, because it shows by example the use of violence for political ends.

When will people realize that war is almost never the answer, in 99.9% of most scenarios, war only serves to enrich a few who sell weapons systems and military paraphernalia? So sad to see the same con game played on generation after generation, yet the deeper questions never receive media attention: what is the purpose of this and how can violence create peace?

Obama Convinces Russians to Reduce Nukes/What YOU Can Do

2009-04-01T23:55:00.000-07:00

This is excellent news. President Obama and Russian President Medvedev met and agreed that we need to reduce our mutual warhead numbers below the level agreed upon in 2002 (possibly even lower than 1700, which is still enough to incinerate the human population many times over, unfortunately). This is a great step, since in the current economy, neither country can afford to maintain its current number of warheads, anyway, nor does our current level of warheads serve any national security purpose (since even 10% of 1700 warheads is enough to pretty much wipe out humanity).

BUT THERE'S SOMETHING THAT ***YOU*** CAN SUPPORT OBAMA ON:

(from the article)

"Obama also pledged to work for ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which the Senate rejected in 1999. Senate aides said Wednesday that trying to bring the treaty to a vote probably would take time, and they predicted that it does not currently have enough votes to pass."

PLEASE LOBBY YOUR SENATORS TO SUPPORT OBAMA BY RATIFYING THE COMPREHENSIVE NUCLEAR TEST BAN TREATY. Contact information to email or call your Senator can be found at www.senate.gov in the upper right hand corner (the "find your senator" search box). As much as it probably pleases the arms industry for us to randomly detonate nuclear weapons in superfluous tests (so we have to buy more to replace the ones detonated), this does not serve the interest of the U.S. taxpayer in an era of ballooning deficits and financial crisis. Further, and of equal importance, tests will invariably have a negative environmental impact, so the fewer there are, the better. I'm not sure if there is some worst case scenario where a test procedure could mistakenly be viewed as aggressive, but even a miniscule possibility of this should be reduced as much as possible (the fewer tests that occur, the less likely this is, if it is likely at all) (although traditional missile tests are more likely to cause such a misunderstanding than what I imagine would be underground detonations that are probably standard for nuclear testing).

PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO PERSONS OF CONSCIENCE AND SUPPORTERS OF PEACE IN YOUR CIRCLE!

The Celebration Is Over

2009-03-30T18:23:00.000-07:00

Two months after the inauguration, people still send me pictures of obama and the first family smiling and looking all cutesy. Apparently no one got the memo. The celebration is over.

It's time for work.

Romantic sentiment about obama is over for me. the troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan. not one soldier has come home as near as I can tell and he hasn't event given banks hundreds of billions of dollars while befgrudgingly giving the auto industry a few billion even though that industry employs working people throughout the midwest (and allowed a lot of working people to break into the middle class and make a better life for their kids). He has refused to attend the U.N. Conference against Racism in South Africa because he doesn't want to discuss reparations or Zionism (discuss, not act on...he doesn't even want to debate the
issue). If he disagrees with people's positions on Zionism or reparations, why can't he send a State Department envoy to represent his administration's position on those matters?

I don't want to see any more pretty smiling pictures. I want the change that was promised.

Fox News Attempts to Distract From Post Controversy

2009-02-24T11:21:00.001-08:00

Those clever lads at Fox News (TV arm of the Newscorp hydra) have found yet another way to distract attention from the latest scandal at Newscorp owned New York Post, this time by insisting that civil rights leaders boycott alleged domestic abuser Chris Brown instead of the Post in a recently published opinion piece. Of course, there is no disclaimer accompanying the piece that explains that Fox News and the New York Post share the same parent company, because that would display the type of traditional journalistic ethics for which Newscorp, as a company, has never been known. Even a post-piece disclaimer would have been appropriate. The piece author does not note Fox News' failure to cover domestic violence in any measurable capacity, for that would be to bite the hand that publishes. Sigh.

New York Times Still Refuses To Question Illegal Action

2009-02-22T21:41:00.000-08:00

The New York Times continues its running failure to contextualize illegal U.S. military aggression in foreign countries as a violation of international law, in this case referring to a bombing campaign inside Pakistan's borders as a breach of sovereignty. Of course performing covert bombing raids inside a foreign country is a breach of sovereignty, but absent UN Security Council resolutions authorizing such acts, they are also flagrantly illegal under the UN Charter, to which we are a signatory*.

Neglecting to place U.S. military acts within an international law context are only the beginnings of the failure of the Times to report on matters involving U.S. intervention, there is a routine failure to attempt to objectively measure claims regarding anti-American sentiment. In the same article, the Times reports (without attributing a named source) on the presence of an "increasingly powerful anti-American segment of the Pakistani population". The Times also more crucially fails to attempt to substantiate this claim with any objective means of measuring the size of this "segment" or to measure whether its size was actually, in fact, "increasing", say, with polling data, as they would when making any similar claim about sentiments of the U.S. population on any given issue.

It is somewhat of a tradition to report a rise in anti-American sentiment whenever U.S. military or paramilitary (C.I.A., etc) forces engage in actions that kill civilians, but the continuous failure to back such claims with actual statistical evidence or any real evidence at all is a stunning failure in journalism. Can world politics be reported on accurately when U.S. journalists report on the unsubstantiated hunches of unnamed officials about what any given set of untold millions of people in foreign nations may be thinking?

There are numerous polling companies engaging regularly in measuring the attitudes of populations in a variety of countries, including Pakistan. It's a shame that reporters don't dig deeper to find objective data to back their reporting on these sensitive issues.

* Students of history may recall Nixon's illegal "secret bombing campaign" in Cambodia. Although civilian casualties and U.S. military casualties in the Afghanistan/Pakistan military aggression are distinctly lower than the Vietnam/Cambodia military incursion by U.S. forces, several observers are beginning to make parallels.

Bank Bonuses Unquestioned In Corporate Media

2009-02-07T00:24:00.000-08:00

President Obama, following the lead of Senator Claire Maskill of Minnesota (who perhaps introduced the idea to provide political cover for her ally?) recently decided to propose that executives at banks who accept TARP funds should have their compensation capped at $500,000 a year

This corporate media account of course neglects to put much emphasis other than a clause at the end of a 43 word sentence:

Under Obama's plan, any executive of a company accepting federal aid will be able to increase their $500,000 basic pay through the award of shares but they will not be able to cash these in until all taxpayer funds have been paid back.

The fine print at the end of this long-winded piece of prose is that executives can accept stock-based bonuses that they cannot cash in after TARP funds are repaid, i.e. after those stocks are worth much, much more than they are currently, which is not much of a "cap". And it still allows for performance bonuses for people whose "performance" has sunk the world into a global financial crisis.

Bank representatives have wisely been quiet on this issue, but corporate media sources have frequently quoted financial experts about the alleged threat that capping bonuses presents, alleging that capped execs may leave the country in protest to work for foreign banks. Few voices are presented to illustrate the ludicrousness of this claim (as prior attempts to limit executive pay or even generally increase taxation on the wealthy have almost never resulted in any significant exodus). This is customary when an official source is quoted from the corporate elite, as heads of corporations and individuals critical of corporate power are almost never treated equally (or given anything close to equal time) in the corporate media.

Of the few critical voices given room to speak on this issue in the corporate media, former JP Morgan investment banker and author William Cohan discredits the criticism that bonuses will lead to "banker flight" the best:

“There’s this fallacy that everybody will leave” if bonuses are restricted, said William Cohan, a former investment banker at Lazard Ltd. and JPMorgan and author of “The Last Tycoons” about Lazard. “What do they do? They push paper around. Where else can you get paid $500,000 to do that?”

Notably, autoworkers were not given the same amount of airtime and inches of newsprint to question whether their benefits should have been limited under the auto bailout terms that much richer (and much more incompetent) banking executives are given to vent about their bonuses being capped at a "mere" 1000% of the median salary of the average American worker.

Any critic of the banking industry might have been quick to note that (1) beggars can't be choosers and if banks want taxpayer funds, they have to accept pre-conditions just like they would from any other massive equity investor (2) executives whose pay is capped still have the benefit of a wide range of performance bonuses (even though their performance so far has led to a global banking crisis and thereby their performance barely justifies their base salary, let alone a bonus) and (3) due to layoffs throughout the banking industry globally, executives whose pay is capped have nowhere else to go. The third point is key. Arguing that caps on salary will prevent Bank of America from tapping quality banking talent is erroneous on its face because layoffs have resulted in a massive pool of very talented, currently unemployed people in the banking industry.

Ken Lewis, who runs Bank of America, received $20m in 2007. BoA needed federal aid after its takeover of Merrill Lynch.

Considering that B of A bought Merrill Lynch for pennies on the dollars and will write down any bad assets they have, it's hysterical to assert that Bank of America needs financial assistance *and* must pay its top executives millions of dollars. If these top executives had made smart business decisions worthy of earning the bonuses they are taking home, their company's profitability would have been high enough to absorb the underpriced Merrill Lynch purchase without missing a step. As is, B of A is loaded down with its own share of bad debt and absorbing Merrill only exasperates the problem, thanks to poor judgment by the same Bank of America execs asserting their right to earn performance bonuses. Rewarding ineptitude is the *opposite* of how the free market is supposed to operate.

Obama Wants To Give Away $350 Billion To Banks

2009-01-13T20:48:00.000-08:00

And newspapers continue to call this giveaway a "bailout".

The media is running with the "Hey, hes better than Bush" angle to explain how *this* $350 billion will be better used than the first $350 billion, which was never used to buy troubled assets as Paulson insisted must happen or the whole sky would fall. No one in the media has questioned why Paulson's dire prediction about the downfall of the global banking industry (that he said would occur if no troubled assets were bought) never came to pass. No media account I have uncovered has questioned why the banks were given $350 billion in exchange for non-voting stock and said banks seemingly didn't use any of that $350 billion to lessen the credit crunch by, say, lending it to folks who wanted credit at a decent interest rate. If that did that, of course, that would end the "credit crunch" crisis that banks have created because...surprise...they are the ones who control the terms regarding how credit is issued.

Picture this.

Bank A, B and C issue loans to borrowers who cannot truly afford their mortgages (both subprime lenders and lenders whose loans are based on minimal, inconclusive or even fraudulent documentation regarding their ability to pay said loans for the life of the mortgage)

Bank A, B and C then re-package said loans and sell them amongst themselves

Real estate market implodes, houses are worth less than the amount borrowed to purchase them, ARMs start re-setting, and generally speaking, reality sets in.

Banks panic and say they are sitting on troubled assets, after they started the trouble by issuing loans they never should have issued and purchasing mortgage securities that they sold amongst themselves in a huge Ponzi scheme.

Treasury Secretary Paulson insists that the federal government are the only ones who can buy these troubled assets (replace "can" with "will" and I agree).

The House of Representatives gets screamed on by its constituents and initially refuses to pass the bailout bill

The stock market collapses because the elites can always sell off a bunch of stock and create a short term drop in the Dow

Constituents get shaken up and convince the House of Reps to pass the giveaway bill. The Senate, filled to the brim with multi-millionaires, is already on board

Paulson gets the first $250 billion.

Bush next authorizes the release of the next $100 billion

Most of it is used to buy non-voting stock in "ailing" banks, NOT to buy troubled assets

The sky does not fall.

Bush then asks for the $350 billion

The general electorate in America screams "You're nuts"

The Bush gang says "Hey, Congress, let that extra $350 billion go, so Obama can spend it, he seems trustworthy"

What?

Here is where the cult of personality goes off the rails. Obama can read a cue card awfully well and he seems like a swell guy, but that has nothing to do with the banks "needing" this $350 billion giveaway for a bank-created emergency.

I'm against it.

I'm against Bush getting it and I'm against Obama getting it.

Come on, America. Don't let this stand.

And are there any honest journalists left willing to risk their career to fight this?

Newspaper Coverage of Melee Trite and Predictable

2009-01-08T01:27:00.000-08:00

I love how standardized media coverage of any race-related melee has become.

After the unprovoked shooting of unarmed citizen Oscar Grant by a BART police officer on a Bay Area Rapid Transit subway platform led to no serious investigatory progress in six days, a few dozen people at a protest became frustrated and decided to randomly misdirect their anger by smashing cars and storefronts.

Nothing new there, but look at the standard racialized potrayal by the San Francisco Chronicle, which decided to point out that some of the vandalized businesses were black-owned. Post-April 29, 1992 (if not back to racial uprisings in the 60s), it has been standard practice for media outlets to mindlessly point out the racial background of the owners of any businesses that are burned, in any uprising in reaction to the murder of a black person. Why? Does this imply that if the business was owned by a non-black person that such burning was somehow more justified? Or that black business owners are exempt from the rage of the dispossessed? The key word, of course, being "dispossessed". The way the media routinely presents these matters as if all black people should feel a sense of ownership in any black-owned business is simplistic and patronizing (as it is routinely presented alongside the oft-repeated admonishment about the error of "rioting blacks destroying their *own* community", presuming that rioters even share a sense of ownership in communities where people are disproportionately renters instead of owners and are disproportionately transient or even that black business owners and rioters of any race even live in the same community; many business owners who operate stores in urban areas chose to live in the suburbs).

As long as discussions of race in the mass media remain trite and shallow, we will never make much progress in this field.

Post Blithely Reports Inauguration Police State

2009-01-08T01:10:00.000-08:00

You would think a story about the shutting off every commuter point of entry into a major city would be worthy of including a critical voice, right?

Not in The Post, where a series have stories appeared regarding the police state tactics being adopted for the "security" of the inauguration, including the closing of metro stations near the inauguration, the closing of metro parking lots at stations outside the beltway that might be used by commuters (a plan later jettisoned because the wild guessing about the number of charter buses needing metro parking turned out to be wildly inflated) and the decision to close 395 and 66, two major highways leading into the city , an option discussed even before the bridge closure decision was made.

Note the quote from that last article linked above, that these security plans will "secur[e] the largest area of the nation's capital for any inauguration".

All this "security" for an incoming president with a personal approval rating in the high 70's? You would think that Cheney had been elected.

A bit ironic that now that throngs of black people are expected to come into Washington to view the swearing-in of the first black President, that there needs to be a massive shutdown of virtually every common-sense way to enter the city via vehicle.

So when people flood the residential streets through which they can still enter the streets via Maryland, can we expect the entire city to be gridlocked? Oh, the brilliance of planning in the absence of media critical analysis.

New York Times Blindly Reports Illegal Military Activity

2008-11-10T10:25:00.000-08:00

For some time now, I have been horrified by the corporate media's tendency to report on covert military or intelligence missions that flagrantly violate international law without ever putting the actions in (il)legal context. Case in point: the New York Times today reported that for the past four years the U.S. military has been illegally invading countries that have not committed a single act against America and killing people therein.

If Syria were to send troops into Israel to kill West Bank settlers it accused of slaughtering Palestinians, this would be an act of war.

If Mexico regularly sent drug enforcement agents to assassinate drug importers they accused of narcoterrorism in San Diego, this would be an international scandal.

So, why does the Times think it's appropriate to report on a story of the U.S. military assassinating people in sovereign countries as if it were an action movie without placing the actions in (im)moral and (il)legal context? Not to mention the fact that the wisdom of this type of "intelligence"-driven covert activity is not questioned in light of horrific "intelligence" failures on September 11, 2001 and in the ramp-up to the Iraq war, during which time we were assured that Iraq had all types of chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons (yet close inspection revealed that Iraq possessed none of the above)? And these are the same intelligence agencies we should rely upon when sending U.S. covert military forces to kill people who may or may not be terrorists, in sovereign countries, and in violation of international law?

To confuse the uneducated reader, the Times includes a lengthy description of how these illegal acts are "authorized" by high-ranking U.S. military and civilian leaders, none of whom have the authority to unilaterally circumvent international law. It would be the equivalent of me arguing in court that I should not be convicted of murder because I talked to a few high priced lawyers about it and we all agreed it would be okay for me to start killing people. The idea is ridiculous on its face.

The recent raid into Syria was not the first time that Special Operations forces had operated in that country, according to a senior military official and an outside adviser to the Pentagon.

Since the Iraq war began, the official and the outside adviser said, Special Operations forces have several times made cross-border raids aimed at militants and infrastructure aiding the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq.

The raid in late October, however, was much more noticeable than the previous raids, military officials said, which helps explain why it drew a sharp protest from the Syrian government.

Thus, even when the Times makes a brief mention of sovereign nation Syria complaining about the incursions, the "protest" is not put in context of an allegation that international law was flagrantly broken by these covert acts, none of which were (or ever would be) approved by the U.N. Security Council, the body that has been given the authority to authorize military actions against (read: killing people within) sovereign states (however one may question the moral authority underlying the authority of the five permanent members of the Security Council to make such decisions). "Protest" is the descriptive word used, as if this were a boycott launched by picket sign-toting hippies, not an explosive allegation of the wanton disregard of the rule of law by the United States military.

Of course, a quick read through "A People's History of the United States" and "Into The Buzzsaw" would reveal the corporate media's complicity in all manner of illegal activities by the U.S. military in the name of imperialism (or under the general mistaken belief that the U.S. military is somehow exempt from the U.N. charter and other tenets of international law), but it never ceases to amaze me, an an impartial, historically aware observer.

Fox News Uses Nader Statement Against Him

2008-11-06T12:51:00.000-08:00

Fox News is no champion for race relations, so for them to use a poorly thought-out racially charged statement from Nader to castigate him is pathetic. I strongly disagree with Nader's usage of the racially loaded term 'Uncle Tom' against the first African-American President (as I would if he used it against any black person) because I think racially loaded terms constitute ad hominem attacks when we should be LASER-FOCUSED ON ISSUES at this crucial juncture in American history. Still, shame on Fox for its continued attempts to undermine anyone who doesn't strictly follow the corporatist line and in pretending to be morally above it all as they do it.

Obama made judgments I questioned when he was a Senator and statements I questioned when he was a candidate. I will continue to make my resistance known (and hopefully felt) if he speaks or acts in a manner I find to be anti-progressive, pro-corporatist or pro-militaristic. I still deplore Nader's head-shaking-ly horrible choice of words, but I deplore Fox News (aka Faux News or Fixed News) even more.

Sexism In The Media Coverage of this Campaign

2008-06-04T14:34:00.000-07:00

Sadly, up until now, Clinton supporters have done a poor job of pointing out specific instances of gender bias in the media coverage of this historic campaign. Even as an Obama supporter, I saw comments made by pundits that were clearly beyond the pale that somehow went unchallenged. However, the Women's Media Center has done a SUPERB job of creating a video montage that pieces together some of the most offensive comments made by some of the more thoughtless pundits out there (this whole 'comment first, think later' trend in punditry has to be killed at the stake).

As an Obama supporter, I thought that MSNBC's decision to have an all-white male cast of commentators (with the exception of a brief comment from Harold Ford) cover yesterday's historic June 3 Obama "victory" speech and Clinton "(non-)concession" speech was an amazingly thoughtless editorial decision. The first African-American candidate to secure a major party presidential nomination and the first woman to lose a high profile race for the same position and reaction to the night culminating these events is covered by four white men? Absurd.

In any case, as the father of a beautiful young girl, this state of affairs worries me deeply.

If this concerns you, please sign the WMC petition on this issue and link/forward this blog entry to anyone you think would be concerned.

Washington Post Misses Obvious Questions

2008-06-04T11:44:00.001-07:00

The Washington Post's coverage on the Metropolitan Police Department's latest ineffectual idea to take on a sudden spike in crime once again fails to address key questions.

MPD says it will cordon off one block on a one-way one-lane major thoroughfare in the violence-plagued Trinidad neighborhood.

But The Post fails to ask some basic key questions:

Why this block? Is this particular block a high crime area? Exactly how many people have been shot from vehicles or in vehicles? Can't pedestrians shoot people sitting in vehicles, decimating the logic for half the rationale here? How many shooters are on foot?

Since Montello is a one-lane one-way street (a key fact not mentioned in this article), won't this just create gridlock for people legitimately trying to navigate Trinidad residential streets? Also, since the location of the checkpoint is known, won't criminals just take West Virginia or Trinidad Ave instead?

This doesn't sound very effectual at ALL.

If there is an open air drug market on this block, it will move to another block.

There have been a lot of killings in that area, but I don't think this is anywhere near a solution.

More officers on bike patrol, at night, might be an effective way of reducing a brazen crime like out-in-the-open homicide, but this seems like it will just slow traffic, not crime.

Local Indiana News Welcomes Marine Invasion

2008-06-04T11:21:00.000-07:00

Is there any action committed by the U.S military which the corporate news structure will critically analyze?

Despite the fact that we're currently at war with TWO countries where plenty of urban areas are available for training, the Marines laughably claim they have to train for urban warfare in Indianapolis and a local news channel unquestionably swallows and regurgitates this story in the link above.

These PR-trained robots will probably be grinning ear to ear when they report that we've all been sold as slaves to Halliburton, too.

Why I Like Jay-Z More Than Nas In 2008

2008-05-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

Nas apparently showed himself to be unbelievably idiotic in this recent Urb interview:

He talks about injecting a message into his music, but admits to never once donating to a charity or special cause "yet," although he admires the philanthropic work of Ludacris and Jay-Z. He hints at the evils of a consumer culture, but defends Steve Stoute's work to "urbanize" McDonalds. ("I don't think he's out to kill black people with McDonalds. I think he's just a business guy and we know McDonalds is interested in the black community for whatever reason, good or bad, whatever.")

A guy who has had platinum records for the past 12 years says he hasn't donated to charity...YET.

And the Mcdonald's quote? Well, yeah, we can safely say Steve Stoute is probably not trying to kill black people with McDonald's (LOL), but for Nas not to be able to comprehend (or at least openly state) how his ex-manager Stoute is waist deep in "the evils of consumer culture" is hysterical. Some people will give the Lil Homie the credit of saying that maybe he was misquoted, but I've read 14 years of Nas interviews and this sounds spot on.

That is to say: this is unadulterated dumbassery.

And, to make it worse, he wanted to release a concept album titled N----r, until a rep at his label allegedly convinced him Wal-Mart would not dig this idea.

Somebody "Drop Squad" this guy ASAP.

Smarten up, Nas.

Obama In Line To Pass Clinton In Pledged Delegates

2008-05-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

Tonight will be the night when Obama acquires the majority of pledged delegates that were available for a candidate to receive in this Democratic primary season. It is a symbolic milestone, but an important one in the consideration of the superdelegates and and psychologically (I'm sure it says a lot to Democratic donors as well). It's almost over now...

Washington Post Biased Against Obama?

2008-03-19T21:41:00.000-07:00

FEEL FREE TO COPY THIS AND EMAIL IT FAR AND WIDE

Obama made a major speech on race on March 18. By the morning of March 19, washingtonpost.com was covering the speech heavily with a feature article as the second story on the front page and three editorials. Within a few hours, the three editorials were gone and the article on the speech was replaced with the non-story of Clinton releasing her White House schedule (initially posted without any analysis of the released materials, just an announcement of the release). While the editorials may indeed rotate that quickly to add new content (I never noticed the turnaround speed), the decision to replace the story on the speech (considered important enough for CNN to carry live in its entirety) with a Clinton story initially lacking any analysis seems absurd (why not wait until the materials could be reviewed by reporters and an actual angle for the story could be developed before yanking the Obama story, his response to the Paster Wright debacle which dominated several news cycles?).

On Monday, March 17 (on page A-5 of the physical paper and prominently featured as the second story on washingtonpost.com for most of that day), the Post ran a story on whether Obama could win the white male vote (an odd query considering how many overwhelmingly white states Obama has won with double digit margins). This story, weak premise and all, included an accompanying sidebar that omitted factual data that favored Sen. Obama. The story's accompanying sidebar, entitled "White Men Can Jump", was supposed to summarize the race so far and present how well Sen. Obama has performed so far in winning the white male vote, but shockingly the sidebar only covered 29 of the 42 contests held to date, not discussing a significant number of Sen. Obama's wins in overwhelmingly white states like Colorado and making the race appear much closer than it is as far as the white male vote is concerned as well as generally (Obama has been ahead in pledged delegates since Iowa, ahead in total delegates and the popular vote for weeks now, has won 30 of the past 42 contests, including margins of 20% or greater in 20 of his victories, yet the Post refuses to properly designate him as a front runner in this race).

Post, why has thou forsaken Barack?

The offending sidebar in question:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/03/17/GR2008031700173.html?sid=ST2008031701338

A list of who has won which state so far is in the upper right corner of the following page (note that Obama has won by a margin of 20% or more in 20 of his wins so far):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_%28United_States%29_presidential_primaries%2C_2008

WRITE THE AUTHOR OF THE MARCH 17 ARTICLE HERE: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/dan+balz/
If you agree that the sidebar is misleading due to its random selection of contests and the editorial decision to remove states where Obama won a sizable white male vote, please write the author at the link above and urge him to encourage his fellow employees at the Post to report on this campaign more fairly in the future. The race is not a tie, Clinton has been behind in pledged delegates since Iowa (usually parallel to the popular vote, where she is also losing to Obama).

The Post coverage on this campaign has been inherently tilted towards Clinton, who they treated as the frontrunner when she was ahead and as tied when she fell behind.