Monthly Archives: July 2016

07.25.16
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Booing Bernie, Self-Inflicted Wounds, And the End of Revolution

 

‘Indict the DNC.’

Image from the Guardian

 

First Story: The DNC is, if not corrupt, certainly skewed toward boring centrism, and staffed with hacks and dopes who send idiotic, if ineffective, emails to each other plotting against Bernie Sanders and any real progressive change. Their little plots might not have come to fruition, but it was symbolic of the attempt to stifle a move toward the left. At the worst, the nomination was stolen from Bernie Sanders, and given to a warmongering neoliberal. Undemocratic superdelegates were just part of that.

Second Story: Hillary would have won anyway. She had the support of Hispanics, blacks, women, and other important parts of the Democratic Coalition. She beat Bernie Sanders by more votes, and more pledged delegates, than Obama beat her by in 2008. The dopes at the DNC didn’t matter. They could have supported Bernie, and he still would have lost.

Third Story: Regardless of DNC perfidy and juvenile grabassery, Bernie supporters have to come around. And the polls say most of them are. Like, 90%. It’s not even close. But the optics are terrible. The media is salivating for a “both sides in disarray!” story. Getting rid of the unexplainable Debbie Wasserman Schultz should be good. Having the most progressive platform in Democratic history should be a huge win. You’ve pushed the DNC as far to the left as can possibly be expected. Even Bernie Sanders is saying that booing is going to be terrible optics, and the stakes are too high. (a Bernie text, via Digby)

And yet, he was booed by some of his own supporters.

Let’s be clear: this is a minority of a minority, and in a very real sense, they are being crazily selfish, hoping for an impossible purity rather than accepting that they have, in a real sense won. The party has moved in their direction, and not even incrementally. If they raise a panic, stomp out, and think that the revolution can only be won by getting everything all at once or nothing at all, then nothing will win. Every amazing thing Sanders accomplished would be ruined.

And yet…they have every right to be angry. What happened at the DNC is not surprising, but it is still maddening and terrible, probably more so for all that. It was a self-inflicted wound by the DNC, in an election that should not be close, that cannot be close.

So the DNC hurt themselves, in an inexcusable way. The lesson for Bernie Sanders supporters is to not do the same fucking thing. Chanting “lock her up”, militating against Hillary, working actively for Trump is a betrayal to everything that every one of us who voted for Bernie voted for. It’s a betrayal of hope. It’s more than a self-inflicted wound. It’s progressive suicide.

So yes, it sucks that you are being asked to be “silent”. I get it. But you’ve already accomplished so much, and the stakes are too high. There is a legitimate honest-to-god fascist running. Your feelings are literally the least important thing here.

07.25.16
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RIP DWS. DNC? GFY.

 

“How many times have I failed at this job?” 

 

Well, it took catastrophic stupidity to finally end the DNC tenure of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, but since that’s what it clearly took to appoint her, and to keep her in after 2014, I suppose that’s fitting.  A few quick thoughts.

  • The main take from the emails– that the DNC was pulling for and maneuvering in favor of Hillary– is not surprising. Not surprising in the sense that we already knew this, but also not surprising in tone. Political people think like political people and talk like them. There wasn’t going to be any neutrality. Remember this when you see people talking about the rigged Democratic leadership who were wondering when the Republican leadership was going to step up to stop Trump. It’s always ok when Republicans do it.
  • That said, this is terrible. It’s another example of DWS’s disastrous “leadership”, in which we managed to lose the Senate, virtually every possible statehouse, and fall backward in the House. It’s like she saw Rahm ignoring the successful lessons of Howard Dean, and saying “I think we should do more of this.” The organization followed. Were in not for the once-in-the-lifetime skills of Barack Obama, and the energy of the resurgent left giving new life to the party, it would be total disarray.
  • I’m not worried about this electorally. Bernie will still be speaking tonight, calling for unity. There will be protests, and a lot of #neverhillary people yelping on TV, but these people weren’t going to vote for her anyway. This is cover, not a reason.
  • That they are right– the system was set up against Bernie– should, in theory, give them even more resolve to push the party to the left. Look at what they accomplished with (admittedly incompetent) enemies. And now DWS is gone! This is a great chance to keep pushing one of the only two viable parties more toward their goals. I know that’s what I am hoping for: an actually progressive in the DNC chairperson role. Why not bring back Howard Dean under whom we were, remember, wildly successful. In the short, medium, and long run, this idiocy could be hepful. (It’s Donna Brazille, at least through the election, which is fine.)
  • A lot depends on the speech tonight, and how well the convention goes. The press would love to have a “both parties in turmoil” story, based on the equivalence of jumped-up fundraisers and college interns at the DNC acting like their venal boss and the rise of American fascism. It’s going to take a hell of a convention to turn that tide. If so, and the story is “a week that started in disarray ended with great unity”, that’ll be a rising tide. I think having Bernie and Michelle and Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden and Barack Obama speak makes it a decent bet.
  • Really, the big story is the Russian connection. It looks more and more likely that they were officially behind the hack, in whatever way the Russian intelligence services work. Trump and Putin are clearly sympatico, though I don’t think Putin sees it as a gathering of equals. Trump does a lot of business in Russia, and needs Russian money, since American banks don’t trust him. His top advisors are intimately intertwined with Russia, and its goals of using energy to dominate their regional rivals. They are vested in the dissoltuion or Europe, the weakening of NATO, and an isolationist agenda. And hey, those are all Trump stances! This could get really interesting…
07.25.16
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The Hazara Suicide Bombing And The Hint of Normal Life

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Image from al-Jazeera

The week after the horrors in Nice was another brutal one, a visceral slog through the depths of today’s insanity, focused mainly on Germany.  An axe attack in Germany. A suicide bombing by a Syrian refugee in Germany. Another German tragedy, an American-style mass shooting, was (seemingly) not directed or inspired by ISIS or al-Qaeda, or any militancy at all, save for the militancy of a disturbed criminal mind (which: same with Nice, and Munich, and Orlando. Same mindset; barely-different justifications).

There was also a massive suicide bombing in Afghanistan, in which 80 people were killed and another 230 were wounded. It’s a strange number, 80. On the day of the Nice attack, as the number kept spiraling upward, 80 seemed unimaginable. It feels different in Afghanistan, though. It feels almost normal. We’re inured to violence there, in a way that dehumanizes the victims of ISIS. Even when lip-service is paid, even (especially) when politicians say that “ISIS kills more Muslims than anyone else”, there’s a feeling that those lives don’t matter. They certainly don’t grab the headlines.

That’s partly a man-bites-dog thing, of course: Afghanistan has been in a state of near-constant war for nearly 40 years, and we’re fatigued. Same with Iraq and Syria and Lebanon and Yemen and anywhere else where people are seemingly constantly being killed. It seems like part of normal life, just the regular course of things. We have trouble extending empathy to imagine them feeling the same kind of pain we can envision in France or Germany.

The thing is though, one of the grossest tragedies of the Afghanistan suicide bombing is who the targets were, and why they were there. The targets were the Hazara, Persian-speaking Shi’ites, a minority based mainly in Afghanistan who are the frequent target of the Taliban, of ISIS, of al-Qaeda, of the Pashtun, and others. They are frequently kicked around, and struggle for protection. Iran is the one constant friend.

So, then, why were they all in a group, able to be targeted?

Guardian

The protesters were marching against government plans for a major power project to bypass Bamiyan, a predominantly Hazara province in the central highlands. Following similar protests in May, Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, established a commission to look into the issue but government attempts to find a compromise failed. On 19 June, a contract was signed to build a smaller electricity line through Bamiyan, which did not placate Hazara activists.

Al-Jazeera

The 500-kilovolt TUTAP power line, which would connect the Central Asian nations of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan with electricity-hungry Afghanistan and Pakistan, was originally set to pass through the central province.

But the government re-routed it through the mountainous Salang pass north of Kabul, saying the shorter route would speed up the project and save millions of dollars.

Electricity. Power. Zoning. The desire to be economically and literally connected. The decision to bypass them might have been to save money, or it might have been to further put the screws on the Hazara, or it may have been both. The former might have been an excuse for the latter, or maybe just a coverup for it. The reasons are part of Afghan history and politics, and I don’t feel comfortable speaking to them.

But the protest? That’s normal life. That’s a group of people who are tired of their situation, who feel oppressed, and who want something that is normal. Take away the historical oppression, and imagine it as anything else: a potentially lucrative and life-bettering development was going to happen (imagine it if you want a railroad or a dam or a base to build the newest military joint-strike hybrid disaster) and then it was taken way. The hydroelectric plant was supposed to go near this town but the TVA shifted it away. There are a million parallels around the world. Anyone would be mad, and anyone would protest.

That’s exactly the point: this is normal life, or at the very least, the desire for it, taken away in a energy-filled pulse, that pulverizes organs and rends limbs and makes the face of life unrecognizable. These are (and were) human beings, who despite living in a land of war, many of whom have known war and terror their whole lives, who are willing to stand outside and protest electrical lines. They petition for surveyors and government project planners to look over their notes again and maybe try something new. They are standing up in the city council meeting of a mid-sized Illinois town and asking for the baseball diamond on 4th to be maintained.

There’s no simple answer for terrorism, and the extension of empathy (which can’t just be willed, not even for someone who tries) won’t end it. The recognition that Muslim lives are real won’t stop ISIS, especially when they are the ones taking Muslim lives like a joyless Queen of Hearts. But the dehumanization of Muslim lives, whether that is in the headlines or in the speeches of politicians who treat refugees like a murderous and faceless horde, serves the recruitment purposes of our enemies. It can help a non-political, non-active, and not-even-particularly-religious immigrant decide that they are going to move from petty crimes and personal abuse to a mass killing, in the vague name of some group they barely know. It’s a cycle that will take a generation to break out of. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a duty to start.

07.22.16
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Quick Thoughts on Why Hillary Will Choose Kaine

 

Sure, why not? 

 

Typing this as we’re waiting on the text announcement, so I’ll probably look like an idiot if something comes through…

I think Hillary will choose Tim Kaine as her Veep, and not out of overcaution, either, or as a sign of which way she’s leaning to govern. I don’t think it is a sellout. I think what is most important to her, sincerely, is ability to step in. Kaine has executive experience, and is uninspiring, but competent, and probably wouldn’t be a disaster. Not to say the other guys would be, but he matches what she looks for.

Electorally…well, he won’t hurt. I don’t think he’ll add too much. Perez, who is my choice, and my favorite among those still in the running, might siphone some votes from white working class uneducated, since he is an amazing Labor Secretary who actually fights for them. He might also keep the Bernie coalition fired up. But I don’t know if it would be enough to make a significant number of them vote for Hillary or against Trump. So the calculation there is probably that he doesn’t add too much, is too unknown, and might face tough questions about ability to handle things outside his area of expertise (fairly or not). That said, the one charge that would normally be levied against him– he’s anti-business and too pro-labor– would ring hollow this year. I still hold out hope, but don’t expect it.

Kaine is a fine pick. There will be stuff we on the left can pick apart, but like Hillary, he governs where the party is. He’ll be more to the left than he would have been otherwise. And I like that the Sherrod-Warren-Sanders-(Feingold???)-et al coalition will be intact to keep their feet to the fire. Kaine isn’t inspiring, but he’s fine, and winning is what matters.

07.22.16
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Trump Did Not Defend The LGBTQ Community

 

Not the roots of a new coalition, ok?

 

In his excellent and lacerating takedown of the inherent un-Americanness of Trump’s acceptance speech, Franklin Foer strikes a strange note.

Aside from his quite striking defense of the LGBTQ community, there was nothing that hinted at expanding freedom to new quarters of the country.

I’ve seen that in a few places, described as “surprising” or “heartwarming” or some other such terms, that seemed to describe his outreach and inclusion to the one community. That was in response to this.

Only weeks ago, in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. This time, the terrorist targeted our LGBT community. As your President, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBT citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.

(When delivered, Trump added “Q”)

It got applause, and Trump said how glad he was to hear a room full of Republicans applaud that. But come on. It is entirely about pitting that community against the Muslim hordes. To be sure, Islam, especially Wahabbi-influence, are terrible to the LGBTQ community. Murderously so. But this was not a defense of the LGBTQ community at all.

This wasn’t a pledge to overturn the overtly retrograde and dehumanizing GOP platform. He didn’t promise to work to overcome prejudice, hatred, and the staunch opposition to civil rights inherent in the party he took over. He didn’t say that he would fight to make sure that people in the LGBTQ community could lead lives unencumbered by the hatred they face, by the bullying and tormenting. He didn’t call the suicide rate among transgendered people a national tragedy. Remember, he alone can solve all our problems, but these problems are outside his concern.

The tell is obviously “hateful foreign ideology”. That’s all that matters. The yolwing jackals in Cleveland, with their gay conversion therapy fetishes and their emotional inability to recognize any “non-straight” for of love as real don’t have to adjust at all. It was all about recruiting new people in his war against everyone else.

Omar Mateen’s swirl of confused insanity, which surely had multiple sources, manifested itself in a hurricane of violence against a community. To Trump, that means that LGBTQ Americans only have one enemy. His exploitation of that is one of his most cnical and hateful maneuvers. I don’t think it is going to persuade anyone though. They are smart enough, and know the long history of oppression against them, to know that his phony compassion is insincere. I’m not worried about the media convincing them. But in looking for a reed to try to grasp onto, to find some sliver of sanity and decency in an outwardly apocolpytic speech, they inadvertnetly grabbed the thinnest one of all.

 

07.21.16
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End of Day 4 Liveblogging: Up Ahead– The Day of The Grasshoppers

 

Cleveland

 

8:12: Been watching Reince Priebus really stir up the crowd. Literally the only time they got excited was when he implied that Hillary should go to prison and the crowd got to do their inane bloodchant. The whole speech has described a Republican Party that doesn’t exist, and hasn’t existed for at least 50 years. Donald Trump will bring peace, prosperity, and make sure that kids have new clothes on their back when they go to school.

8:14: The Trump countdown just hit 1:00. What a sickening feeling. The darkness is really here. The most unqualified person ever nominated is also the worst person ever nominated. Nixon would be sickened by him, both because Trump is deeply unserious and far too insecure.

More after the jump.

Continue reading →

07.21.16
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Trump’s Foreign Policy: More Dumb Than Bad, But Also Bad

 

Map of Balkans

Pictured: The Baltic States, to Trump. 

 

Everyone who cares about foreign policy was stunned by David Sanger and Maggie Haberman’s NYTimes piece yesterday, in her interview with Donald Trump about foreign policy. The biggest revelation was that he wouldn’t automatically extend support to NATO allies if they were attacked, in particular the Baltics. And the only country that would attack them is Russia, unless Sweeden gets ornery.  This caused a lot of gasps, from right and left, because it undercuts the basis of security after WWII, not to mention being in line with Trump’s (and Manafort’s) love of Putin.

For example, asked about Russia’s threatening activities that have unnerved the small Baltic States that are among the more recent entrants into NATO, Mr. Trump said that if Russia attacked them, he would decide whether to come to their aid only after reviewing whether those nations “have fulfilled their obligations to us.”

He added, “If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes.”

The Trump camp, led by Manafort, is disputing this and saying that she’s lying, but honestly, who do you believe? Even if the reporters didn’t have Haberman and Sanger’s reputation, is it possible to believe anything the Trump camp says?

While I was writing this, Haberman and David Sanger released the transcript:

“You can’t forget the bills,” Trump said. “They have an obligation to make payments. Many NATO nations are not making payments, are not making what they’re supposed to make. That’s a big thing. You can’t say forget that.”

“My point here is, Can the members of NATO, including the new members in the Baltics, count on the United States to come to their military aid if they were attacked by Russia? And count on us fulfilling our obligations—” Sanger asked.

“Have they fulfilled their obligations to us? If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes,” Trump said.

“And if not?” the Times’ Maggie Haberman asked.

“Well, I’m not saying if not,” Trump replied.

To me, this is even more damning, and more to the point. There’s actually a strong case to be made out NATO, and our role in interventions, and how much we pay. And Trump knows that, sort of. But only a little, and only on the surface. Only enough to say things like “you can’t forget the bills”. He can claim he didn’t say not, because “I’m not saying if not”, but that’s bullshit. It’ a dodge, but not one to try to soften the blow. It’s a dodge because he has no idea what he’s talking about. 

There’s a vague principle of “I’ll screw you over if you try to screw me over”, but it’s not the thinking of a man who has ever thought about foreign policy in any broad way, in any way that wasn’t part of his narrow worldview. He literally has no idea what he’s talking about. That’s the scary part. He knows absolutely nothing about the world, except for his “instincts”, which are invariably dumb and ill-considered.

Take this:

Mr. Trump said he was convinced that he could persuade Mr. Erdogan to put more effort into fighting the Islamic State. But the Obama administration has run up, daily, against the reality that the Kurds — among the most effective forces the United States is supporting against the Islamic State — are being attacked by Turkey, which fears they will create a breakaway nation.

Asked how he would solve that problem, Mr. Trump paused, then said: “Meetings.”

Or:

He talked of funding a major military buildup, starting with a modernization of America’s nuclear arsenal. “We have a lot of obsolete weapons,” he said. “We have nuclear that we don’t even know if it works.”

“We have nuclear” are the words of a man who was told something in passing and assumed he is an expert. It’s like Paul Ryan’s “well, there are fighting seasons in Afghanistan” line, except more shallow.

I mean, he isn’t disqualified because his policies are bad. Twitter was alive with his NATO nonsense as being “disqualifying”, as if someone would say “this line has finally been crossed.” That’s not the case. The statements are “disqualifying” because they reveal, again, how manifestly unqualified he is. The man knows literally nothing about foreign policy save for what he reads on the back of cereal boxes. You could fit his knowledge in a matchbox and still never have a want for matches. It’s a terrifying prospect.

But, at least, he cleared up that his “America First” slogan isn’t like Lindbergh’s.

“To me, ‘America First’ is a brand-new, modern term,” he said. “I never related it to the past.”

He paused a moment when asked what it meant to him.

“We are going to take care of this country first,” he said, “before we worry about everyone else in the world.”

Oh.

07.21.16
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Cruz Starts The Great Hijacking Myth

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“You’re mad now, but have I told you about my grades?”

So, I didn’t watch last night, but obviously caught up on Ted Cruz’s refusal to endorse, and the delicious chaos that followed. Cruz looks bad, and is hated, and his good buddies are turning their back on him. But this was peak Cruz. He knew what would happen, and still did so. Here’s why.

Cruz is betting on a huge Trump loss, and wants to position himself for 2020. That’s pretty obvious. But the way he’s doing it is to lay the groundwork for The Great Hijacking narrative that will be the Republican story after the loss. The nativists and racists in the party will claim betrayal by the elites, of course, and there will be opportunistic politicians who try to attract them, but what’s left of the Party (not much!) will try to rally around the idea that they were hijacked and bamboozled by a New York billionaire, and that conservative ideas weren’t represented.

Cruz is in a perfect position to do this. On immigration, on Muslims, and on the red-meat social issues, he’s no less and often more hideous than Trump. He can appeal to all sides of the party and its fractured remnants. So he takes the heat now, but then seems like the only person who had the sheer balls to stand up to Trump. So when the party is dazed after their drubbing (this is the theory; not a prediction), Cruz can be the one they turn to.

Paul Ryan is trying the same thing. But as much of a piece of work he is, he’s still slightly more responsible and party-oriented. For Cruz, the GOP has always just been the best avenue for his Messianic outlet. He’s a true believer, but only in himself. He’s willing to break the party if he thinks he can collect the shards into his own basket. I think that’s his plan here. He might be overplaying his hand; he is, as we’ve talked about, more clever than actually smart, more of a striker than a strategist. In four years (or two, really) the nativist wing might, in their anger and betrayal, suddenly remember that he’s a goddamn Mexican or whatever, and the what’s left of the Establishment might try to freeze him out.

But don’t count him out. He is still a good politician, and got hundreds of delegates despite being one of the most unlikable men in America. In it’s own way, it was more remarkable than what Trump did.

What’ll be interesting is when he’s up for reelection in 2018. Who knows if this will hurt him or not. But how can he possibly run and even pretend that he has any interest in serving as a Senator? He’ll be running for President the day his second term starts in 2019. He might not even stop in Washington on his way to Iowa. At least Rubio has two years to pretend to be a Senator. Cruz will run for President regardless of if Trump wins or loses. He’s not waiting another eight years. He’ll do what Reagan did to Ford and Teddy Kennedy did to Carter. That’s a prediction.

The last note is that Cruz did the impossible last night. For literally anyone else, not endorsing Donald Trump would be a sign of character and of decency, of principle and, if you are a Republican, of sacrifice. Only Ted Cruz can make doing the right thing self-serving and selfish. He’s a remarkable man.

07.21.16
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Out of the Maw: Slahi Cleared For Release

America is a carceral state. There’s no disputing the statistics; we house nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoner, have the largest prison population in the world, and the second-highest rate per capita (behind Seychelles, which has a total prison population of 735). It’s one of the hallmarks of American history: we have a fierce desire to lock people up and throw away the key, and it has often been bipartisan, and always steeped heavily in race. Black lives have been fodder for free labor in prisons across the country, and more recently, as a way to pad the profits of private enterprises. It’s how we’ve dealt with the end of slavery and the expansion of civil rights; we’ve undercut those gains through prison.

And that desire for incarceration, that deference toward rough justice, is reflected by the fact that exonerating the wrongfully convicted, through programs like the Medill Justice Project, are seen as squishy and self-interested and grandstanding, instead of the backbone of true justice. We’d rather 50 innocent were convicted than a guilty person going free. It’s part of our national character.

After 9/11, that character became global. Our system of mass imprisonment swallowed the world, reaching into every country for anyone who might have done wrong. The people who were sucked up were tortured in black sites, tortured by their own governments, and tortured by the United States. They disappeared into obscure bases, and were locked up in Guantanamo Bay, cut off from the world.

It was part and parcel of our normal way of handling justice: wrap up anyone who might be guilty, or who might look like they are guilty (often because a disputatious neighbor dropped a dime), and never look back. To be sure, many people who were captured were dangerous terrorists. But not all. And that was the problem. It tooks years for many of them to be released, and after Obama took office, the whole idea of releasing them began to be seen as some sort of liberal weak-on-terror-weak-on-crime synthesis, and the wheels of justice slowed down again. Nativism, and our native tendencies, created an atmosphere where the dominant feeling was “if they aren’t guilty then why are they in jail?”

But some good news, finally, if you can describe “end of terrible” as being good. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, whose memoirs described in great detail the suffering and torture he went through, was yesterday cleared for release after a 13-year nightmare. His release has long been a cause celebre, as he was a symbol of everything that went wrong, but it was also a real cause for the dedicated and heroic lawyers of the ACLU.

You should read his book, Guantanamo Diary, (and the legal fight to have it released and see the light of day was equaly heroic), but in brief: he fought for al-Qaeda against the Afghan Communists, which we were cool with, went to Germany where he “crossed paths” with one of the 9/11 planners, and then went home to Mauritania. No evidence he was active, none that he was a plotter. But after 9/11, everyone who might be a baddie, or who was loosely connected to one, was swept up by countries who wanted to be on the good side of the US. Slahi was arrested in 2001, sent to Jordan for torture, and would up in Gitmo after a stop at Bagram, a bloody map of the worst excesses of the “war on terror”. As Hina Shamsi of the ACLU writes, talking about what happened in Guantanamo:

Slahi was one of two so-called “Special Projects” whose brutal treatment then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally approved. The abuse included beatings, extreme isolation, sleep deprivation, sexual molestation, frigid rooms, shackling in stress positions, and threats against both Slahi and his mother. In Slahi’s habeas challenge, the federal judge determined Slahi’s detention was unlawful and ordered him released in 2010. The U.S. government successfully appealed that decision, and the habeas case is still pending.

He’s no less guilty of anything today than he was 15 years ago. But today he finally gets to see the light of day, or at least the hope for it.

There are still 76 people in Guantanamo, 31 of whom have been cleared pending security conditions in their home countries. This isn’t for their safety; but to guarantee they can be monitored. Think about that: we’re telling these people we have no reason to hold you any longer, but we’re going to until we can be sure that your life is nearly as circumscribed as it is now.

The problem is that they aren’t seen as people. They are by the ones closest to them, even those in charge of the system, who actually have to interact with them. But there is no public pressure; if anything, it is appealing to say “keep em locked up!” That means there is no political will. Not shutting down Guantanamo became a rallying cry of the right as soon as Obama was sworn in, even though many had believed in it before, since it was common sense. But the Obama era mutated that, and now the prisoners are back to who they were: faceless terrorists, guilty by dint of being not-American.

This isn’t surprising. We have no problem locking away innocent Americans, because, they’re probably thugs anyway, right? That’s why this delayed justice for Slahi, who lost so much of his life, is bittersweet. The injustice hasn’t stopped. It’s part of who we are, whether it is in Lousiana or the Cook County Jail or around the world. We lock people up, and then assume the shadows of the bars are a tatoo reading guilty.

07.20.16
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Palm Oil And the Modern World

Thanks to Eric Loomis for sharing this Rainforest Action Network video about the horrors of the modern palm oil industry, which underpins so much of the processed food we eat every day.

 

Palm oil is one of those things that we rarely think about. It is ubiquitous-seeming, and feels healthier than high-fructose corn syrup, or any of the other corn products for which we as Americans are essentially born to be depositories. But like so much about modern capitalism, it has pernicious global effects which go unseen to the vast majority of its uses.

Centered mostly in Indonesia and Malaysia, the palm oil industry has destroyed millions of acres of jungle, which contributes to climate change, and more immediately to massive, out-of-control fires in Indonesia (which themselves heat up the world by what they blackly project into the atmosphere). It’s gotten so bad that, despite it being relatively lucrative, Indonesia is moving to ban plantations.

I say “relatively” because, basically, the amount of lucre you see depends on who you’re related to. If it is to the President of PepsiCo, then it’s a damn good deal. If you are a Bangladeshi immigrant whose passport has been seized and who has a company-store-type debt to “employment recruiters” that would make an Upton Sinclair villain seem like Eugene Debs, not so much. If you are a local worker who has to recruit your unpaid and now uneducated children to help you meet insane quotas, not so much. If you are anyone working in squalid, slave-like conditions where your health is the cost of the job and where you are disposed of when no longer useful, not so much.

Not for nothing, but Indonesia and Malaysia have long been the hidden periphery of jihad, for some reason being a good place to attract recruits who have differences of opinion with the presently-constituted modernity. It’s not all directly connected, but it isn’t on a different page altogether.

That’s the web of modern capitalism. When I buy something with conflict palm oil, I am directly contributing to the immiseration and slavery of people thousands of miles away, whose only crime was being born in the wrong country. I’m contributing to massive, ruinous deforestation and climate change. Not only that, but these massive plantations take away arable land that will be needed as desertification increases, the world heats up, and the population continues to grow. If the world seems unstable now, wait until hundreds of millions are out of food. These are the choices we make.

Luckily, the knowledge gives us power. There are ways to try to avoid it, shopping consciously. It’s very hard to give it up 100% though, which is where activism has come in. PepsiCo, which imports 750,000 tons a year, is looking to change its standards. Cargill, not exactly a liberal bastion, has put pressure on a company who has a “children make the best workers” policy. Regardless of whether or not these are sustainable, they show the public pressure works.

It works best, by the way, when it turns into political pressure. As we’ve discussed, it isn’t impossible to impose supply chain standards, including labor standards and environmental rules, on American companies (or companies that want to sell in America). If Pepsi wants to use palm oil, they can demand equitable treatment for the people who harvest it. What’s going to happen? Are the people running the plantations going to stop selling? On principle or something?

It’s a politically-winnable issue. The main issue is overcoming the eye-rolling pushback (even on the left) when people bring up “labor rights”, and the weird notion that the people buying goods can’t demand change, whether that’s you buying Lay’s or PepsiCo buying palm oil.

We also have to overcome the fatigue we all feel when we look at the enormous interlocking set of stacked labyrinths that make up modern capitalism and see the effect we have. It’s easier, and always tempting, to throw our hands up and say “that’s just the way it is” and try not to think about it. But it’s a manmade system. It can be changed.