Damn Those Corporations for [Giving/Not Giving] Tsunami Aid
In the case of corporate giving money and other aid to victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami, its apparently a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
In an op-ed for the Boston, Robert Kuttner complains that the United States relies too much on private aid and not enough on government aid.
Kuttner complains that,
The $350 million pledged by the Bush administration, some of which will be diverted from other relief needs, represents 0.003 percent of our national income. Europe, on average, is spending about triple that.
. . .
The good heart of the American people can be expressed both by personal charitable giving and by national policy. Bush’s version of America’s good heart is pass-the-buck and the responsibility. His version of bipartisanship is that good old Bill Clinton gets to shill for private money that a decent government would be providing.
The article then degenerates into a complain that corporate taxes aren’t high enough. In Kuttner’s world, a corporation that donates, say, $15 million to tsnumai relief is in fact stingy and probably borderline evil since it might be paying, say, $30 million less in taxes than a decade ago. That money, after all, is rightly the government’s.
In Europe, however, at least one commentator has a slightly different view. Jonathan Freedland in an op-ed for The Guardian, complains that corporations there are not doing their fair share.
Freedland laments, for example, that British Petroleum gave only 1.5 million pounds, which pales in comparison to its annual profits of about 9 billion pounds. Freedland explains this stinginess, thusly,
Today’s British companies enjoy some of the lowest tax rates outside America. Now they have the best of both worlds: low tax and no guilty expectation of philanthropy. They can keep almost all their money to themselves.
Freedland ultimately arrives at the same conclusion as Kuttner,
. . . This last week has seen a rare and stirring demonstration of people power. Maybe we ought to turn to the big companies and say: you can no longer have it both ways. Either you give as generously as we do — or we will take it off you in tax. Either way, it’s time to start paying.
Clearly the only rational response to a tsunami in Asia is to increase corporate taxes in the U.S. and UK.
Sources:
Another wave of miserliness from Britain’s super-rich. Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, January 5, 2005.
‘The good heart of the American people.’ Robert Kuttner, January 5, 2005.
Tags: Uncategorized
Ramsey Clark Joins Saddam Hussein’s Legal Team
In a move about as predictable as the fact that the Sun will rise tomorrow, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark recently joined the legal team advising deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
As the Associated Press aptly noted,
[Clark] . . . is a staunch anti-war opponent who has met Saddam several times over the last 15 years. He was considered a friend of Iraq under Saddam when the United Nations slapped an embargo on Baghdad following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
One of his many trips to Baghdad included a human rights conference (!) in which Clark blasted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which, of course, was written predominantly by rich Western democracies — evil de jure in Clark’s pantheon.
When not sucking up to Saddam, Clark was off defending Slobadon Milosivec, going so far as urging Belgrade to resist NATO and promising that, if it did, it would enjoy “a glorious victory.” After losing a case in which he defended Karl Linas, who had served as a Nazi Guard at a concentration camp in Estonia, Clark publicly questioned the need to keep prosecuting Nazis, “forty years after some god-awful crime they’re alleged to have committed.”
From military officials accused of mass rape in Bosnia to preachers accused of genocide in Rwanda, if there’s anyone whose been accused of crimes against humanity in the last decade, Clark has been there to lend his support.
Although Clark has apparently been written off by the more moderate elements of the Left, Clark has been at the forefront of Leftist protests in recent years due to his affiliation with the World Workers Party. The WWP was formed as a split of the Socialist Worker’s Party in the mid-1950s, with the WWP being compose of former SWP members who supported the Soviet invasion of Hungary.
WWP is obscure to most people, but it has a much more well known front group called International ANSWER. International ANSWER, of course, has been a major force in organizing anti-war demonstrations against the U.S. attack on Iraq.
Sources:
The Mysterious Ramsey Clark: Stalinist Dupe or Ruling-Class Spook? Manny Goldstein.
Ramsey Clark, the war criminal’s best friend. Ian Williams, Salon.Com, June 21, 1999.
US rebel joins Saddam legal team. The BBC, December 29, 2004.
Lawyer: Ex-Attorney General to Aid Saddam. Associated Press, December 29, 2004.
Tags: Iraq, Ramsey Clark, Saddam Hussein
M. Shahid Alam On 9/11 Terrorists
A couple years ago I mentioned the controversy over Northeastern University and terrorist sympathizer M. Shahid Alam (see this 2002 article). At that time, Alam had written a screed in CounterPunch complaining that he was unfairly being tagged as a supporter of Palestinian suicide bombings. In fact, the criticism was fair since Alam had clearly defended Palestinian suicide bombers in an earlier article published at Counter Punch.
Anyway, Alam is back defending suicidal terrorists, this time offering words of praise for the 9/11 hijackers. In an article published at Dissident Voice, Alam writes (emphasis added),
On April 19, 1775, 700 British troops reached Concord, Massachusetts, to disarm the American colonists who were preparing to start an insurrection. When the British ordered them to disperse, the colonists fired back at the British soldiers. This shot heard round the world heralded the start of an insurrection against Britain, the greatest Western power of its time. And when it ended, victorious, in 1783, the colonists had gained their objective. They had established a sovereign but slave-holding republic, the United States of America.
The colonists broke away because this was economically advantageous to their commercial and landed classes. As colonists, they were ruled by a parliament in which they were not represented, and which did not represent their interests. The colonies were not free to protect and develop their own commerce and industries. Their bid for independence was made all the more attractive because it was pressed under the banner of liberty. The colonial elites had imbibed well the lessons of the Enlightenment, and here in the new world, they had an opportunity to harness liberty in the service of their economic interests. Backed by the self interest of their landed and commercial elites, and inspired by revolutionary ideas, the colonists had a dream worth pursuing. They were prepared to die for this dream and to kill. They did: and they won.
On September 11, 2001, nineteen Arab hijackers too demonstrated their willingness to die and to kill for their dream. They died so that their people might live, free and in dignity. The manner of their death and the destruction it wreaked is not merely a testament to the vulnerabilities that modern technology has created to clandestine attacks. After all, skyscrapers and airplanes have co-existed peacefully for many decades. The attacks of 9-11 were in many ways a work of daring and imagination too; if one can think objectively of such horrors. They were a cataclysmic summation of the history of Western depredations in the Middle East: the history of a unity dismembered, of societies manipulated by surrogates, of development derailed and disrupted, of a people dispossessed. The explosion of 9-11 was indeed a “shot heard ’round the world.”
Al Qaeda, of course, supports the Taliban-style version of Islam which, the last time I checked, had very little to do with people living in freedom and dignity (unless, of course, you find publicly hanging prostitutes in stadiums to be dignified).
The Founding Fathers sought to move the cause of human freedom forward by replacing a colonial monarchy with a democracy (albeit a very flawed democracy from our vantage 2 centuries later). Comparing them to the Al Qaeda and similar movements is obscene.
Source:
America and Islam: Seeking Parallels. M. Shahid Alam, Dissident Voice, December 28, 2004.
Tags: M. Shahid Alam, Terrorism
James Wolcott Roots for Death and Destruction
As yet another hurricane threatened — and later made landfall — Florida, left wing nutcase James Wolcott described on his weblog how much he enjoys rooting for death and destruction from such storms,
I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong–Mother Nature’s fist of fury, Gaia’s stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own. Sure, a hearty volcano can be enjoyable. Burning rivers of lava: so picturesque. But a volcano is stationary, like Dennis Hastert after a big lunch. It doesn’t offer the same dramatic suspense. Hurricanes are in unpredictable flux. They move, change direction, strengthen, weaken, lose an eyewall, repair an eyewall; they seem to have volition and opera-diva personalities.
So there’s something disappointing when a hurricane doesn’t make landfall, or peters out into a puny Category One.
So far, as many as 14 people are believed to have died due to Hurricane Frances. Wolcott must have been positively jumping for joy at Gaia’s revenge.
Source:
An ignoble confession. James Wolcott, September 4, 2004.
Tags: James Wolcott
Project Censored Becomes Project Censorship
Perusing the Project Censored 2005 web site, I found it a bit odd that an organization calling itself Project Censored was lamenting the fact that a lawsuit against a news outlet had failed to impose government censorship.
In its #11 most censored story, “The Media Can Legally Lie,” Project Censored retells the story of Jane Akre and Steve Wilson. Akre and Wilson were hired by Fox affiliate WTVT and in 1997 prepared a story about bovine growth hormone. After it was finished, WTVT wanted changes made to the story. When Akre and Wilson refused to go along with the changes, they were fired.
Akre and Wilson sued Fox on the grounds that Fox was essentially asking them to broadcast things that, in Akre and Wilson’s opinion, were simply not true. Akre won $425,000 while Wilson lost. Fox appealed the decision and on February 14, 2003, the Florida Second District Court of Appeals unanimously overturned the award to Akre.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why some on the left see this lawsuit as a good thing and the Florida court’s reversal as a bad thing. For example, the Project Censored summary derisively notes,
During their appeal, FOX asserted that there are no written rules against distorting news in the media. They argued that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have a right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves. Fox attorneys did not dispute Akre’s claim that they pressured her to broadcast a false story, they simply maintained it was their right to do so.
Under Project Censored’s view, the government should actively censor and/or punish media outlets that disseminate materials that are factually erroneous. Are they serious? So if CBS wants to broadcast Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 conservative groups should be able to sue them for running material that distorts the truth?
The last thing in the world we need in the United States is the state acting as a fact checker. Leave it to a group calling itself “Project Censored” to advocate for such naked censorship.
The best solution to bad speech is more speech, but lately the Left’s view of speech seems to run along the lines of “I may disagree with what you say . . . so shut up now.”
Source:
The Media Can Legally Lie. Project Censored 2005.
Tags: Project Censored
Cynthia McKinney Returns
Former Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney earned herself an all-but-certain return to the U.S. House of Representatives after defeating her opponent in the Democratic primary. McKinney is running in an overwhelmingly Democratic district, and the odds of her Republican opponent prevailing are about as likely as the Cubs winning the World Series this year.
So McKinney has been interviewed and quoted by all the usual suspects, from CNN to Amy Goodman.
The odd thing is that McKinney is still the only politician of national stature who has openly supported and endorsed Robert Mugabe’s dictatorial regime in Zimbabwe, and yet outside of a handful of right wing web sites, you’d never know this.
This is especially odd given how much further downhill Zimbabwe has progressed in the two years since McKinney left office. Mugabe’s current plan appears to be to intentionally force starvation on his political opponents by turning down food aid that his country is in desperate need of. Does McKinney still think Mugabe is simply the victim of racist Westerners engaged in a campaign of deceit against him?
Apparently such questions just aren’t that interesting.
Tags: Cynthia McKinney
Dennis Kucinich: Who Needs Stable Democracy in Iraq?
Dennis Kucinich appeared on Democracy Now earlier this month to face questions about whether he and his delegates were selling out their anti-war position. Kucinich struck a deal on the Democratic Party platform’s statement regarding Iraq. The short version is that given how few delegates Kucinich managed to amass — 23 of 2,973 — Kucinich wasn’t in much of a position to demand anything and he pretty much took what the Democrats gave him. As Goodman notes, Sandy Berger was quoted afterward, “we didn’t give up anything” to Kucinich on the war.
Kucinich himself conceded he barely had enough delegates to even get Kerry’s people to the table, much less push for an anti-war plank,
Amy Goodman: Well, what about the charge that your delegates — that you backed down because you didn’t want to have a platform fight over what many considered a key piece [sic] plank in the platform that they wanted to get in.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich: Well, I sill consider the withdrawal from Iraq as being central not only to America’s security, but to peace in the world. However, we didn’t have the votes to be successful in a platform fight. You know, we barely had enough to start the discussion. I’ve carried this campaign in challenging the war for two and a half years.
In that case, maybe Kucinich should propose a Department of Futility. And it’s hard to understand why Kucinich received so few votes and delegates given statements like this,
Amy Goodman: But if you’re concerned about Democrats winning in November, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, by a margin of 56-38%, people who identify themselves as Democrat, say United States troops should leave Iraq as soon as possible, even if Iraq is not completely stable. And not stay in Iraq as long as it takes to make sure Iraq is a stable democracy.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich: I know that position well because I’ve been out in the country continuing to promote that position.
I suspect its answer like that which earned Kucinich so many delegates. Goodman’s concern is a bit odd since only about 37 percent of Americans self-identify themselves as Democrats.
Finally, Kucinich accused Ralph Nader’s running mate Peter Camejo of lying about a conversation that Camejo claims to have had with Kucinich,
Finally, Congressman Kucinich, we had Peter Camejo, the vice-presidential running mate of Ralph Nader, independent presidential candidate, on the line. He said, “Dennis Kucinich told me John Kerry is a fake and a fraud when we had a private meeting. He said but I’m sorry, Dennis, I’m going to go public with that because I think it’s horrendous that you now think he’s a terrific guy when you don’t believe it.” What is your response?
Rep. Dennis Kucinich: I’m sorry to hear that my good friend Peter Camejo would want to get to that depth of — sink to those depths. You know, I never said that. It is not my approach in life to disparage people, even those people with whom I have the strongest disagreement, such as George Bush . . . So, I’m sorry — I have no idea why he would say that. But it never happened.
Wow — I guess Camejo wants that 2 percent of the vote so bad that he’s willing to betray confidences to do so. What a lovely person he must be.
Source:
Did Dennis Kucinich sell out anti-war Democrats. Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, July 14, 2004.
Tags: Dennis Kucinich, Iraq
China Detains SARS Doctor Over Tiananmen Square Letter
In June, Chinese authorities detained Dr. Jiang Yanyong and allegedly subjected him to interrogation over a letter he wrote about the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Jiang, 72, came to the Western media’s attention in late 2003 when he was the first Chinese surgeon brave enough to defy the government’s ban on mentioning the SARS epidemic. Jiang wrote a letter to Time Magazine and a Beijing television station outlining the truth about the severity of the SARS outbreak in China.
Jiang followed that up in February by writing a letter detailing his activities treating patients during the brutal suppression of the student uprising in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989. Jiang’s letter read, in part,
In 1989, students in Beijing, in view of the corrupt government at that time, voiced their just demand for fighting corruption and bureaucratic racketeering and for promoting clean and honest government. The students’ patriotic acts had the support of the overwhelming majority of people in Beijing and the country. However, a small number of leaders who supported corruption resorted to means unprecedented in the world and in China. They acted in a frenzied fashion, using tanks, machine guns, and other weapons to suppress the totally unarmed students and citizens, killing hundreds of innocent students in Beijing, and injuring and crippling thousands others.
Then, the authorities mobilized all types of propaganda machinery to fabricate lies and used highhanded measures to silence the people across the country. Now 15 years have gone by and the authorities are expecting the people to forget the incident gradually. In the past they called this Tiananmen incident a “counterrevolutionary rebellion,” and then they called it the “1989 political storm.” Giving the incident a different name specifically indicates the perpetrators’ guilty conscience. If it was a storm, why did they have to mobilize hundreds of thousands of troops to suppress it? Why should they use machine guns and tanks to kill innocent ordinary people? Thus, I propose that we must correctly characterize the students’ patriotic movement on 4 June 1989.
I am a surgeon at the PLA Number 301 Hospital. When the June 4th Incident took place in 1989, I was the director of the hospital’s department of routine surgery. On the evening of 3 June, I heard repeated radio broadcasts urging people not to go to the streets. At about 2200 when I was in my dormitory, I heard continuous gunshots from the north. Several minutes later, my pager beeped. It was the emergency room’s call. So I rushed there. I could not believe my eyes–lying on the floor and the examination tables were seven young people with blood all over their faces and bodies. Two of them were later confirmed dead after an EKG test. My brain buzzed and I almost passed out. I have been a surgeon for more than 30 years. When I was a member of the medical team of the PLA Railway Corps that built the Chengdu-Kunming Railway, I also saved many wounded soldiers, but they were injured by inevitable accidents during the construction process. However, lying before me this time were our own people, killed by children of the Chinese people, with weapons given to them by the people, in Beijing, the magnificent capital of China. But I could not afford the time to think at that time. After another salvo of gunshots, more wounded young people–I didn’t know the exact number–were brought to the emergency room by people in the vicinity with pull carts and pedicabs. While I examined the injured, I also requested my staff to notify other surgeons and nurses to come to the emergency room. All 18 surgical rooms in our hospital were used for emergency treatment for the injured. My job in the emergency room was to determine the nature of the injuries and treat the injured. During the two-hour period from 2200 to midnight, our hospital’s emergency room accepted 89 patients with bullet wounds. Seven of them later died despite emergency treatment. In the 18 surgical rooms, doctors in three groups spent most of the night performing surgical operations to save all those who could be saved.
In June, shortly before the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square anniversary, Jiang and his wife were both arrested. She was released a couple weeks later with orders not to talk to the press. Jiang was released on July 19th after having apparently undergone unsuccessful “re-education” classes with Chinese authorities. His release was only partial, however, as he is forbidden to talk to the press about his detention and is being closely monitored by Chinese authorities.
Sources:
Beijing keeping close watch on Sars informer. Chua Chin Hon, The Straits Times, July 23, 2004.
Dr. Jiang Yanyong’s letter calling for June 4 reappraisal. Jian Yanyong, February 24, 2004.
Beijing ‘brainwashes Sars hero’. The BBC, July 6, 2004.
Sources: Chinese Doctor Being ‘Brainwashed’. Voice of America, July 5, 2004.
Tags: China
Gore Would Have Won and Moore Has Proof — Someone Wrote a Letter-to-the-Editor Saying So!
SpinSanity earlier this month released a nice analysis of some of the distortions present and inaccuracies present in Michael Moore’s film “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
One thing they point out is an error of omission regarding Moore’s claims about the 2000 election. Moore uses a quote from CNN legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin that, “if there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election.”
As Spinsanity, points out, however, a consortiums of Florida newspapers studied exactly that topic and found that the election outcome in the event of a recount would have depended on the method. If only “undervotes” (where people voted say Democrat in every single race except the President) had been included, then Bush would have won. If “overvotes” (where people voted for multiple candidates for president) had been included, then Gore would have won. In the CNN clip Moore features, CNN reporter Candy Crowley notes that Toobin’s analysis assumes that “overvotes” would have been counted, which was not certain (and certainly would have been the subject of further litigation either way that decision had went).
To make his point more dramatic, Moore also includes a montage of different newspaper headlines asserting that Gore would have won a recount. One of those headlines reads “Latest Florida recount shows Gore won election.”
There are a number of oddities about that headline, however. Screen grabs of the film from illegally available copies on the Internet, show that the headline is credited to the Pantagraph, a small Illinois paper.
Rather than actually show the actual paper from that day, the version show in “Fahrenheit 9/11″ is a mock-up. The mock-up gets the date wrong, however, showing the headline appearing on December 19, 2001 when it actually appeared on December 5, 2001.
Moreover, the headline is not to a news story or analysis or even an editorial, but rather to a letter-to-the-editor.
Not surprisingly, the Pantagraph’s Bill Flick notes that Moore has not returned its calls requesting a comment on this oddity.
Source:
Moore’s flick: bowling
for movie edits. Bill Flick, Pantagraph, July 23, 2004.
Fahrenheit 9/11: The temperature at which Michael Moore’s pants burn. Brendan Nyhan, Spinsanity, July 2, 2004.
Tags: Michael Moore
Nader Goes on the Offensive While Moore Suffers from Amnesia
In a recent debate with Howard Dean, Ralph Nader insisted that he is not bothered by Republican aid for his run for the presidency and that he will not return donations from traditional GOP donors.
In a July 9 debate at the National Press Club, Dean complained of the donations from traditionally Republican donors saying,
[Nader] doesn’t’ want his legacy to be eight years of George W. Bush in this country, but that is exactly what these Republican contributions are buying.
Nader fired back that John Kerry’s campaign had also received donations from individuals who have also donated to GOP campaigns and asked if Dean would insist that Kerry return those donations.
A couple days before the debate with Dean, Nader showed up on Democracy Now to tell Amy Goodman that Kerry is just another puppet of Israel and lash out at some liberal-left critics. Goodman asked Nader about a recent Kerry position paper on the wall Israel is building through the West Bank,
Amy Goodman: Ralph Nader, the “Boston Globe” is reporting senator John Kerry has released a new policy paper on Israel, in which he fully supports Israel’s construction of the 425-mile wall through the West Bank. Last year, senator Kerry said that the wall was a barrier to peace. But in the new policy paper, Kerry writes, “The security fence is a legitimate act of self-defense. The tight of the paper is, “strengthening Israel security and bolstering the special u.s.-Israel relationship.” in one part of the paper, Kerry concludes that Israel’s cause must be America’s cause. Your response.
Ralph Nader: That’s an example of a puppet. A puppet politician who does not think in the best interests of the American people and the Israeli and Palestinian people. The majority of the people in Israel and the majority of Americans of Jewish faith in this country support an independent Palestinian state, as a solution — peaceful solution to that long-drawn-out conflict. It’s really interesting. John Kerry on the wall is now not even up to the Israeli supreme court, which has issued a decision quite critical of the way that the wall is being built to take existing Palestinian land, separate peasants from their farms or children from their schools. So, he ought to read the latest decision by the Israeli supreme court.
Meanwhile, Michael Moore gave one of his typically frank and truthful interviews to Playboy magazine, and when asked about Nader’s campaign replied,
I know. I tried to talk him out of it. I don’t know what to say. He apparently has promised that he will not run in the swing states and will not attack Kerry, but he said that last time about the swing states and Gore.
Moore should know — he spent time campaigning with Nader in the swing state of Michigan during the 2000 campaign.
Sources:
Nader calls Kerry a “puppet” for Israel. Interview, Democracy Now, July 7, 2004.
Nader defends GOP cash. Carla Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicle, July 10, 2004.
Tags: Michael Moore, Ralph Nader