Why Mugabe still has support and how to deal with him

(crossposted at Daily Kos)

Mugabe may be running one of the less effective dictatorships in the world today, but he does have more support among Zimbabweans today than Bush does among Americans. No, this is not some troll diary arguing that we shouldn't really oppose Mugabe because of all the things he and ZANU-PF did to liberate their country or because he is facing a western imperialist conspiracy against the African people. It's not an argument in favor of Mugabe at all. It's just an attempt to explain why he does still have support in Zimbabwe, who his supporters are, and how well-informed policy could more effectively remove him than the kind of ignorant, "speak loudly but carry a small stick" policy currently favored in Washington could. If you're interested in a little reality based background, read on.

Mugabe certainly gets some backing because of his role as leader of the major guerrilla group in the Chimurenga, the war for independence. That support has been eroded by the failure of his recent economic policies, of course, but why doesn't he change them, what is he getting at, and why do a minority of Zimbabweans continue to support him? That was then, this is now, and why does he seem to be such a different person?

First, you have to understand that the Chimurenga war against the Ian Smith led white oligarchy was not fought so much for independence or even an end to racial discrimination as it was fought over the land. Land is a sacred issue to many Africans, the Shona and Ndebele of Zimbabwe included. If you're Irish you may understand that. The Irish didn't have a concept of private land ownership, but they gave up everything (language, culture, everything that constitutes national identity to most nations) to take back their land. The Shona and the Ndebele felt and feel the same way. They may not have had to give up as much, or fight as long as the Irish did, but they still had to fight. Indeed, they were fighting among themselves over the land when Cecil Rhodes came in and changed its name to Southern Rhodesia.

Joshua Nkomo, head of ZAPU, the Zimbabwe African People's Union, who joined with Mugabe during the Chimurenga but fell out with him later, was once asked by a reporter if he intended to nationalize the land. He said that land belonged to society and everyone has a right to land. Confused, the reporter asked if that meant that he did intend to nationalize land. Nkomo replied (quoting from memory here)

You may call it "nationalization" if you wish, but land will be normalized.

Had he been asked the same question, Mugabe would probably have replied "Yes, we are Marxist-Leninist Communists and we intend to nationalize land." I remember watching an official ZANU-PF representative introducing a documentary about the Tanzam Railway to a Maoist group. He finished his introduction by claiming that "We also had this Marxism Leninism Mao Tse-Tung Thought before the Europeans came." I asked him later if he meant that the Shona way of life was based on principles of Dialectical Materialism. The ZANU-PF representative laughed at my question, which was more Socratic than serious, but he did say that the attitude toward land ownership was the same, that land should be the collective property of the community.

Why had I used the term "Shona way of life" in asking the question?

Because even Jesuit missionaries had trouble figuring out Shona religion, and reverted to teaching them "natural religion" before trying to convert them, it is common to refer to "the Shona way of life" rather than "Shona traditional religion."

from an art site:

The Shona way of life centers on the family and reflects profoundly spiritual and humanistic values.

from a religious site:

The Shona in large part do not display a sense of being overwhelmed by evil. They do not spend their time calculating the degree of evil in creation nor do they express anger at spiritual forces for permitting the world to crush them so. Rather they have developed a society that is based on values so foreign to our own Western thought that it raises the important issue of whether our Western based theodicies are irretrievably culture-bound. Where I began the study focusing on the inability of Western theodicies to account for the high incidence of evil in the third world, my focus was now changed to look at the irrelevance and incongruence of the values of Western theodicies in relation to the traditional cultures of southern Africa.

If you want to understand how people there feel about it, give up everything you thought you knew and try to look through other people's eyes. This is not a rational fight over economic policy. It is a sacred struggle over land. Mugabe and his backers still care about that, even if Tsvangirai and his mostly modern, urban, working class followers don't.

ZANU-PF was allied with Maoist China during the Chimurenga, and they were armed by the Chinese. This was partly convenience, but partly ideological, since both were peasant based movements. ZANU-PF had an ethnic base among the Shona, while ZAPU had an ethnic base in the Ndebele. Ethnicity is never the whole story in politics, Zimbabwean or American or elsewhere, but it can't be ignored anywhere, either. ZANU-PF was also peasant based, while ZAPU had a strong base in the urban proletariat. Joshua Nkomo was an old union leader of railway workers, and continued to get strong support from the working class, as well as arms and support from the Soviet Union.

Note to anyone who thinks that ZANU-PF was "pro-Chinese" while ZAPU was "pro-Soviet": you have it backwards. The Soviets were backing ZAPU while the Chinese were backing ZANU-PF. The Chimurenga wasn't started by outside Communist agitators. It was started by Africans for their own purposes.

ZANU-PF in power continued to be a peasant based party concerned primarily with the land issue. They ran the country well for the first several years of their rule, and the country developed so rapidly it was held out as proof that an African country didn't immediately collapse or stagnate just because Africans took over the government. Because of that the example of Zimbabwe was important in convincing the South African government to release Nelson Mandela from prison and negotiating an end to apartheid with him. Mandela has spoken out against what has been going on recently but he is refraining from criticizing Mugabe by name, and some interpret his remarks as even-handed criticism of both sides.

Mugabe's very success changed the political ground from under him. Mugabe and ZANU-PF's continued insistence on the centrality of the land issue and the confiscation of white farms was increasingly irrelevant to the urban proletariat that his successful development policies were creating. They didn't care about the land issue any more. They were more modern than that. Once again, Mugabe's main opponent was someone who came out of the union movement, in this case the miners' union. It has been from the working class that most of the support for his Movement for Democratic Change has come.

Mugabe's support still comes in strong in the villages. His party is well organized there and he has support from traditional rulers. Few people there care about the decline of the Zimbabwean dollar as long as they can feed themselves from the land, and international standards of democracy matter less than the Shona way of life that they see Mr. Mugabe defending. Things look very different than they do to a wage worker in a mine or a city. Wage workers in the cities, on the mines and in factories have a more modern, less traditional outlook. They are the ones feeling the brunt of Mugabe's repression and economic mismanagement and they are the ones who most desperately want to get rid of him.

I have read all kinds of conspiracy theories. One was that the Zimbabwe military is led by white generals who are afraid of war crimes trials for their actions during the Chimurenga wars and that they are holding Mugabe hostage. Others usually center around western plots to hold onto stolen land. Neither kind of conspiracy theory is convincing. What's obviously happening here, the simplest possible explanation, is that Zimbabwe is changing too fast for Mugabe and his aging Chimurenga leaders to comprehend. Those who were once tomorrow's people have become yesterday's.

I think it was President Kennedy who said that when we make non-violent change impossible we make violent change inevitable. That's what Mugabe has done, tried to prevent the normal processes of history from working the way they are supposed to. That's why he and his group, formerly progressive but now reactionary, will be swept aside by the forces of history. Marx (or at least the Marxists) may have been wrong about the proletariat bringing socialism, but he was certainly right that the process of economic development creates this working class that then becomes the dominant force in society.

But that sweeping aside of the old peasant-based ZANU-PF rule must not only be done by the Zimbabweans themselves, it must be SEEN to be done by the Zimbabweans themselves, not by Western or other international intervention. Not that the US military is in much condition to intervene anywhere right now. Not that Bush really cares about Zimbabwe any more than he cares about Darfur or Myanmar. They don't have enough oil and no one there tried to kill his daddy. Sanctions have done what they can, but where sanctions served notice on apartheid South Africa that it couldn't expect support from the west, they only convince Mugabe that the west never would let him take back land from the settlers. It seems only a political revolution can bring change to Zimbabwe. It can only be led by the working class. Only the working class has the power and the interest in bringing democracy to Zimbabwe. Only the people themselves can create democracy in a country. We couldn't export it to them even if we wanted to. Democracy by its very nature cannot be imposed on a people. It must be learned.

Well, why shouldn't the working class lead the struggle against dictatorship in Zimbabwe? The working class led the collapse of Communism. It is unions that are taking the lead in toppling Mugabe. They have already taken the lead in seeing that he couldn't get more arms from China.

All praise to the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, which for four days refused to unload a shipment of Chinese arms destined for landlocked Zimbabwe. That was long enough for a South African court to issue a judgment refusing to let the 77 tons of weapons be shipped across the country to Zimbabwe, despite the South African government’s unwillingness to intervene.

I almost forgot. There was a discussion on DemocracyNow.org you should consider. I particularly recommend the views of Horace Campbell in the discussion.

update on the DOJ scandal

from Veracifier:

When will this administration be called to account for its crimes?

from The Los Angeles Times:

Probe finds illegal hiring at Justice Department
Promising lawyers and law students were rejected because of their political and ideological views, internal investigators say.
By Richard B. Schmitt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 25, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Scores of highly credentialed young lawyers and law students were denied interviews for coveted positions at the Justice Department because of an illegal screening process that took political and ideological views and affiliations into account rather than merit, Justice Department investigators concluded in a report released Tuesday.

In 2006, some applicants for sought-after jobs in the department's honors and summer intern programs were rejected because they were members of the American Constitution Society or Planned Parenthood or because they expressed concern about gender discrimination in the military, the report says.

The Supreme Court and the Constitution

Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley famously noted that "No matter whether the country follows the flag or not, the Supreme Court follows the election returns." Well, Mr. Dooley never lived long enough to witness the Florida 2000 election. Furthermore, the public hasn't spoken yet about the detention of the prisoners called "unlawful enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We may hear from them in the next presidential election, though.

What's the issue here? The recent Supreme Court decision affirming that the Guantanamo detainees are entitled to petition for a writ of habeas corpus in civilian courts. Personally I can't even figure out why this is an uncertain point. The Constitution is quite specific about habeas corpus, even mentioning it before the Bill of Rights was added:

the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public safety may require it.

Article I Section 9

There's no rebellion. There hasn't been one, AFAIK, since the Green Corn Rebellion in 1917. There's no invasion either.

SO WTF? How do almost half of the SCOTUS justices justify suspending habeas corpus?

Well, former Attorney General Gonzales said it's a privilege, not a right. OK, that word "privilege" is the word used in the Constitution, but to distinguish privileges from rights is anachronistic. They didn't make that distinction in 1787, and we shouldn't read it back into the Constitution they wrote then. And AAMOF, the SCOTUS doesn't fall for that line of argument.

The dissenting court judges take a different tack. Roberts said it should be left to the legislature and executive. So why do we need courts at all? Scalia said the decision "breaks a chain of precedent as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad" as if either aliens have no rights or Guantanamo isn't under US control. Either position is risible. He also says that the ruling places undue burdens on the Commander in Chief, and that it will cause the death of more Americans.

In the decision, Justice Kennedy said:

Our opinion does not undermine the executive's powers as commander in chief. On the contrary, the exercise of those powers is vindicated, not eroded, when confirmed by the judicial branch. Within the Constitution's separation-of-powers structure, few exercises of judicial power are as legitimate or as necessary as the responsibility to hear challenges to the authority of the executive to imprison a person.

I don't say the detainees should necessarily go free, but I do say that if there is a reason to hold them it should be produced in public so that we can all see it. Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. I'm not saying that these people are necessarily innocent, much less that they are good guys. I am saying that they are entitled to a day in court. Civilian courts are not supposed to be suspended unless they are unable to operate.

If the Commonwealth of Virginia could give Nat Turner his day in court, with a lawyer, the United States can give the Guantanamo detainees their days in court, too. The slavocrats of southeast Virginia were surrounded and outnumbered by slaves who wanted to kill them. They had far more reason than we do to fear for their safety. If they didn't abandon the Constitution when it was only 50 years old, we have no reason to abandon it when it is over 200 years old.

Remember, this is not the Supreme Court that appointed Bush, it is that court amended by several justices whom Bush has appointed. If even this court rejects his arguments, I don't think they should be taken very seriously.

The Obama Veepwatch, Vol. 3: Wesley Clark

From Newsweek:

Odds: Strong--precisely because he's a Clinton loyalist. Actually, on paper Clark may be the only veep candidate who meets every single one of Obama's requirements--*UPDATE: or at least what experts say Obama needs, politically-speaking, in a second fiddle.* He's white. Check. He's Southern. Check. And he has the two kinds of experience Obama most desperately lacks: military and executive. A Vietnam war hero, McCain will hammer his Democratic rival on national security and insist that the Illinois senator, whose foreign policy resume is painfully short, doesn't have necessary gravitas to serve as Commander in Chief; Clark, who served for 34 years at the Department of Defense and retired as Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, provides Obama with an effective counterargument. What's more, while McCain fought in a war (and legislated his way through others), Clark boasts what some voters might see as a more relevant resume point given our current situation in Iraq: he actually ran one. (See: the highly effective U.S. intervention in Kosovo--not to mention the fact the Clark, a Rhodes Scholar, finished first in his class at West Point, and McCain finished fifth from last in his class at Annapolis.) In short, Clark would not only help Obama blunt McCain's major line of attack but also give him a leg up on some key military matters (while adding a dash of administrative competence to boot). And like Obama, Clark was against the Iraq war from the start.

More at the link above.

Clark for VEEP!

Wesley Clark is leading Jim Webb on the D-Kos poll!

Now, it's no secret that I'm a fan of Wes Clark, but why would he be a better choice?

Not just that he would be a better Veep, who could give Obama the kind of serious, useful foreign policy and military expertise that he needs and that General Clark gave Hillary when he was advising her. But because we can't afford to lose that Virginia Senate seat. We only just barely picked it up from Senator Macaca in 2006, when the entire Republican Party seemed to be in free fall. It was a cliff hanger of an election, only decided by overseas votes (which have finally become Democratic. It will likely go Republican again without Jim Webb to defend it. Obama doesn't need to start his first term losing that Senate seat.

Wes Clark's not doing anything that's not indispensable, or that someone else couldn't do just as well. Other than campaigning, that is, and he could do a lot more of that a lot better as a Vice Presidential Candidate. He was also early identified with Hillary and actively campaigned for her. His being on the ticket would not only bring the moderate Democrats and Republicans that Obama needs, it could help reconcile Hillary's supporters to her losing the nomination.

Wes Clark is the no-brainer choice for Obama's running mate. I hope he picks him.

The importance of the Vice Presidency, 2008

One of FDR's Vice Presidents, John Nance Garner, likened the Vice Presidency to a warm bucket of spit. It's not always the one way ticket to oblivion it is for most of those who've held the office, though. John Adams and George H. W. Bush rode it into the White House in the next election. Millard Fillmore, John Tyler, Calvin Coolidge, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Johnson, and Lyndon Johnson (among others) rode their own Vice Presidencies straight to the White House without an intervening election. You never know what's going to happen.

But you can guess. Especially this time.

John McCain will be the oldest president ever inaugurated if he wins. The current holder of that title, Ronald Reagan, got through on a lot of sleep and a "hands off" attitude. One joke from the time went that Jimmy Carter proved anyone could be president and Ronald Reagan proved you didn't really need a president. John McCain isn't like that. He's hyper. He could drop dead or have a stroke any day, even during the campaign. It is unlikely that he could survive a four year term with two wars going on, a fractious country and Congress, and the mess that Bush has made of the world. John McCain's Vice President can't be impeachment insurance, the way Dan Quayle and Spiro Agnew were for George H. W. Bush or Richard Nixon respectively.

What about Obama? He's young, he's healthy, the contrast couldn't be clearer in terms of their likely ability to survive naturally for the next four or eight years. I'm not worried about his suddenly dropping dead in office as much as I am worried about his finding nothing to do after his presidency ends. And I'm even more worried, much more worried, about his not surviving because someone will assassinate him. Maybe I was just too traumatized by the assassinations of the 1960s, but it's always a possibility that any president will be assassinated, and an even greater possibility for the first black president of the United States. Obama's Vice Presidential running mate will be as serious and as important a choice as McCain's.

Back to the blogosphere!

I didn't realize things had gotten so crazy here. I go on the Clark Community Network and I get flamed as an alleged Obama troll. Now that he has the nomination I'll think about going back. Meanwhile, it's sad that some people have lost all perspective.

Meanwhile back on D-Kos, where there are a lot more people (and a lot more Obama supporters) than there are at the Clark Community, I get myself flamed as racist, but not before being told that I was "offensive" and "arrogant" and several other such epithets by someone who totally lost it. Well, he had reason to be upset, but that's an explanation, not an excuse. I really don't like being misrepresented. Not that he took much time to read what I had written before losing it totally. Oh, well. At least I have my TU status back.

I met these guys a long time ago.

and I think the world of both of them, but I never knew they were connected until now.

Ammon Hennacy and Utah Phillips

Ammon was a saint. My parents introduced me to him when I was too young to know who he was, but I could tell he was important by the way all the grownups revered him. Later I read some of his books and was very impressed by the way he thought and the way he really tried to put his ideals into practice.

I met Utah Phillips much later, through the Wobblies. Or was it at a demonstration in DC? I think it was both because I kept running into him all over the place. I loved his music even more than his politics. I'll miss him a lot.

If you never knew either of these fine gentlemen, I feel sorry for you. The world is poorer without them.

“We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

Well, Hillary Clinton (and I) do remember. But a lot of Americans don't. Especially the ones who are voting for Hillary's opponent in the Democratic race.

Which highlights something about this race I haven't seen dealt with on the Internet.

Hillary is the last Baby Boomer standing. After 16 years of Baby Boomer hegemony half the people (all the non boomers?) are sick of Boomer rule. They're thinking either "hand it back to the grownups", or "move on to the next generation."

Our parents said boomers were only interested in three things: sex, drugs and rock & roll.

First we had the sex addict boomer president, who couldn't keep his pants zipped up.

Then we had the crackhead president, who kept hallucinating weapons of mass destruction and hearing voices.

I was hoping that we would get the Rock & Roll president next. But I'm not even sure which candidate that would have been.

If I can say anything here in defense of the baby boomers it would be that America's Greatest Generation was a hard act to follow. I just hope we won't go down in history as another "blundering generation".

Hood uh thunk it?

Remember when people were afraid that South African blacks would take revenge on the whites when they took power? Looks like they needn't have worried. Seems the black South Africans hate other African blacks more than they hate the whites in their own country.

Immigrants flee hate killings in South Africa

It seems race is less important than nationality here, and even ethnicity is less important than class in causing social conflicts. There are a lot of ways to analyze this, but those who believe in race warfare, or who think that race is the main factor dividing humans, should think long and hard about what's happening here.

That "quaint" Geneva Convention

Anyone who thinks Guantanamo,Abu Ghraib, etc. are not a break with American tradition should see this film. Abu Ghraib made Stalag 17 look like a Boy Scout Camp. We executed people after World War II for less than has been going on, and is still going on, in the United States' name today.

The two Democratic Parties

The Democratic Party has never been a coherent political party, at least not for long. It started out as an Andrew Jackson fan club, but couldn't hold together long after he died. That's how the Republican Party got the chance to elect Abe Lincoln. And the Democrats have had their share of splits since. 1968 wasn't the only time the police were called out on the floor of the national convention. 1924 had plenty of fights, too. Seems half the party couldn't reconcile themselves to the Catholic (Al Smith) that the other half of the party wanted to nominate. So they fell apart again until FDR put them back together, at least for a while. You get the idea. Falling apart over Civil Rights in the 1960s wasn't an aberration, it was par for the course.

The most interesting statistic about the 1994 election, when the Republicans took control of Congress back from the Democrats, is that people with high school or college educations were more likely to vote Republican. People who had less than a high school or more than a college education (i.e. advanced degrees) voted Democrat. Nearly half of the country was Democratic, but the two halves of the party couldn't, literally couldn't, talk to each other. They mostly never ran into each other in life.

This division is now reflected in the primary election results. Ironically, the candidate of the better educated is an African-American raised by a single mother, while the candidate who appeals to the less well educated is a conspicuously wealthy multi-millionaire. They both have plenty of education, though.

What's my take on all this? Heh! I'm in the 5% of Democrats who really doesn't care. All I care about is that the party gets its act together in time for the election. The only thing that scares me now is another Republican in the White House. Even John McCain. If there's any way to prevent that, I want to be part of it. I've had it with the Republican Party. Even John McCain. Would an Obama-Clinton ticket do it? I'd vote for it!

Where was I?

Don't ask. Workplace issues, family issues, another part-time job on top of the one I've already got. I even joined several of those high IQ societies. I know, I know. Believe me I know. High IQ societies are just for losers who have big brains, no real accomplishments and nothing better to do. I guess that's me. I also found out that a friend who keeps one of these things that he's a compulsive writer. I'm not. I am a compulsive reader, which keeps me well informed (I'd like to think) but writing doesn't come so easily to me. I'll try to keep this up better from now on, though.

It's more than just the other things keeping me busy, though. I've been depressed about the constant fighting among Democrats, and that McCain, who used to be my favorite Republican, has completely capitulated to the Bush line on just about everything from Social Security to National Security. America is going to hell, and it would be nice if we could all ride in a handbasket. More comfortable than the ride we're going to get, I'm afraid.

Now let me post something real.

Let's all support Joe Biden!

[crossposted at D-Kos]

I know he's not in the race for president anymore. As a big fan of his I'm happy about that. Joe is the chairperson of the very important Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, one of the most important jobs in the US government, especially now. The Senate of the United States has a special role in foreign policy, approving all treaties and ambassadors, and the Chair of the Committee on Foreign Relations, whether it is occupied by J. William Fulbright or Jesse Helms, has an important voice in foreign policy.

Joe Biden has that voice now. He is the most qualified American, not just the most qualified Democrat, to use it for good. Let's all encourage him to do it. Specific reasons and suggestions are welcomed in comments.

1. We need Fulbright hearings

Public opinion about the Vietnam War was heavily influenced by the informative hearings that Senator J. William Fulbright held into American foreign policy in southeast Asia. As Senator Fulbright himself said about the hearings he held:

Under our system Congress, and especially the Senate, shares responsibility with the President for making our Nation's foreign policy. This war, however, started and continues as a Presidential war in which the Congress, since the fraudulent Gulf of Tonkin episode, has not played a significant role. [...] The purpose of these hearings is to develop the best advice and greater public understanding of the policy alternatives available and positive congressional action to end American participation in the war.

If that was true about the Vietnam War, it is true exponentially now, during the even more fraudulent Iraq War, a war that has been even more damaging to American national interests than the Vietnam War ever could have been.

2. We were promised hearings

OK, OK, much as I support impeachment, I do remember that the Democrats who took over Congress in the last national elections did say that impeachment was "off the table." I can understand and respect that they want to keep their promise to the American public. It may be unusual in a politician, but it is not less, and probably more, laudable for being unusual.

I also remember that the Democrats who took over Congress promised us hearings. I thought that was OK, because I figured that if the truth came out about the W. Bush administration's lies and incompetence, then the American public would demand that W. Bush be impeached.

That didn't happen, because enough hearings weren't held. I do know that some hearings were held, but not enough to make an impact on public opinion. Most Americans didn't learn from Congress that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, because Congress didn't hold enough hearings. They learned about it because a reporter asked Bush, shortly before the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, what Iraq had to do with the attacks. "Nothing." Bush said, seemingly startled, perhaps because he had never said that Iraq did have anything to do with 9/11. Of course, when Helen Thomas asked Bush why we did invade Iraq he didn't have a coherent answer. However, the fact that Congressional hearings didn't inform the US public merits condemnation of Congress for dereliction of duty.

Isn't it about time that Congress ask why we invaded Iraq? Isn't it about time that Congress ask why our Middle East policy, indeed the entire foreign policy of the United States, is such a train wreck? The Annapolis peace process isn't even a policy, it's a Hail Mary pass. The Congress has subpoena powers. The Senate has a special role in foreign policy. The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations is the obvious committee to ask the hard questions that need to be asked so that the American people can finally find out and understand how our foreign policy became this balled up. We need to insist that they hold these hearings. Joe Biden is the person who must hold those hearings.

3. This is Joe Biden's real job

Joe Biden in the chairperson of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Nobody else has that job. No one else has responsibility for Congressional oversight of foreign relations, except the corresponding chairperson of the House Committee, and the House does not have the powers in foreign affairs that the Senate of the United States does. It is Joe Biden's responsibility to hold these hearings. No one else can hold these hearings. If Joe Biden doesn't or can't see that we have to make him see it.

4. restore Constitutional balance

I know a lot of people here wanted Joe Biden to be president. Now some of them are saying he should be Secretary of State. I'm not saying he wouldn't be good in those positions, but putting him into the executive branch of government doesn't solve one of the most serious problems of the Bush administration: the growth of power of the "unitary executive" branch, and the damage it has done to the traditional American balance of powers.

This administration has concentrated too much power in the executive branch, going farther than Nixon did during Watergate toward a dictatorship, ignoring Congress and running the government by secrecy and signing statements. Even if the Democrats take over the executive branch that dangerous imbalance could persiste, and will persist unless the Congress itself acts to restore the balance. Impeachments would be a good way to start that, but impeachments are "off the table" according to Congressional leaders. The only alternative offered is investigations. Demand an investigation into Bush foreign policy. How did it go wrong and how can it be fixed. Such hearings will prove invaluable to whichever Democrat takes over the presidency next year. Even if some Republican takes the presidency (heaven forfend!) they will find it hard to ignore these hearings.

5. DEMAND HEARINGS NOW!

Please, everyone, write to Joe Biden and demand that he hold Fulbright style hearings about the train wreck of a foreign policy that got us into this counterproductive war in Iraq and which has poisoned our relations with nearly every other country on earth.

No one is as qualified as Joe Biden to hold those hearings. No one else is chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, so no one else can hold those hearings. It's Joe Biden's job to hold those hearings. It is his destiny to become one of the greatest chairpersons of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in American history. If he can't see it we have to make him see it.

We were promised investigations in the 2006 elections. Joe Biden must hold those investigations. Please write him and convince him that he has to do it. He could be the greatest chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since Fulbright himself. Now he's no longer distracted by his Quixotic campaign for president, so that he can fulfill his destiny as one of the all time great senators of US history.

Please write and call Joe Biden at:

Senator Joseph Biden, Delaware, (Chairperson)
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-6225

Phone: (202) 224-4651

Bhutto: two assassination plots?

Benazir Bhutto had no shortage of enemies. The strange nature of the assassination attempt(s) that succeeded suggest to me that there may have been two separate plots, either of which might have succeeded, at least one of which certainly did.

Look at this video. "Look, these are the three shots fired, and this is then the blast."



There is a gunman wearing sunglasses who shoots her, and a suicide bomber who then blows everyone up. Were their plots even related? Possibly but I doubt it. The MOs are too different. But maybe the bomber was just covering for the gunman. The whole thing should be investigated by some neutral body, whether Pakistani or international.

Meanwhile let's not forget that Pakistani Islamists blew up a suicide bomb and killed at least 48 people who were praying in a mosque on the Id festival. I don't usually make claims about who are really Muslims (I'll leave it to Muslims to argue about that) but I'll make an exception in this case. If praying in a mosque on the Id day is unbelief, what is Islam? These maniac Islamists cannot claim to be Muslims any more.

WTF time, religion

Background story from Beliefnet:

Compared with Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, George W. Bush's religious beliefs seem quite conventional.

Excuse me, but I don't remember any of those presidents hearing voices.

[I've been away from this blog for too long for reasons I won't bore you with, and there's too much to note. I'll try to catch up with the most important stuff today.]

I'm glad someone else cares about the Constitution!

From The New York Times:

Republicans have already started blowing hot air about any naysayers trying to stop spies from tracking terrorists. No one is doing that. The question really is whether Congress should toss out chunks of the Constitution because Mr. Bush finds them inconvenient and some Democrats are afraid to look soft on terrorism.

Let's do something about al-Qa'ida and our other enemies, but we can do that without shredding our Constitution. For that matter, Bush has shredded the Constitution without going after al-Qa'ida very much. That he won't move against our real enemies makes his talk of military necessity obviously hypocritical.

I kind of miss the old days

As far back as the 1960s you could have an honest debate about race with racists. They would come on TV and say that black people were racially inferior and had to be segregated. They didn't pull any punches about it. You could discuss it with them and try to change their minds. Eventually enough minds were changed that it was no longer acceptable to say such things in public. Of course the opposite has been happening with homosexuality, but that's another story, maybe for another diary.

This is about racism, and how racists are now shouted down by the public reaction. «You have not converted a Man because you have silenced him» as the Twentieth Century artist Ben Shahn famously quoted John, Viscount Morley's "On Compromise", 1874.

Let's look at the notorious recent remarks by Nobel Prize winning scientist James Watson. What did he reportedly say?

inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa. . . . All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really.

Now there's his apology, and his explanation, but no real discussion about whether what he said was true, or even the extent that it might be true, or the ways in which it might be true, has appeared in the press to date.

No, don't for a minute think that I think he's right about race and intelligence. Even disregarding the important questions "What is race?" and "What is intelligence?" I'm just not even convinced that intelligence is really hereditary. His explanation kind of hints at that, but doesn't really say it. Most people think, or just assume, that intelligence is hereditary because they were told when they were young that it is, and the generality of the population who don't follow this don't realize that Sir Cyril Burt faked his data, although he still has defenders.

I would like the press to honestly report the controversies about intelligence and the effects on it of heredity and environment, including prenatal environment. I would like people to understand that this is not a simple issue. I wish I had saved the link, but I read some time ago that blonds exposed to blond jokes before taking IQ tests scored 8 points lower than a control group of blonds. Sounds suspiciously similar to the famous 11 points difference between blacks and whites in the US, doesn't it? But there are all kinds of other explanations that should be debated. The role of caste in American society particularly needs to be considered. African Americans are not just an ex-slave group, they are the traditional undercaste group, Untouchables.

There are even more controversial ideas that no one will even mention. Most testing of blacks has been in the US. Not only have there been pressures on them to act dumb, coming not only from the white community but from other blacks who accuse intelligent blacks of "acting white".

African Americans are a distinct gene pool. If they score lower on intelligence tests than whites, what does that have to do with Africans, even assuming that intelligence is hereditary? Maybe the intelligent ones were doing the catching, and the 'slow' ones were caught and sent to the Americas? There have been claims that Igbos and other African ethnic groups are even more highly intelligent, on average than white Americans. To extrapolate from one group of blacks to all blacks is no less racist than to extrapolate from a single black to all blacks.

Most damning to the heredity theory is the fact that Igbos made a large contribution to the African American population. The word "okra" (for example) is an Igbo word in American English. The simplest (and therefore the most likely) explanation for the differential success of Igbos over African Americans is cultural. African Americans have lost their original Igbo culture and therefore are not as entrepreneurial (and not as successful) in America's highly competitive entrepreneurial society. Maybe we should forget about Swahili and get African Americans back to their real African culture.

But most of all, let us have an honest debate about race and intelligence. Let us remember that each individual is an individual, and that even if blacks, as a group, score lower on intelligence tests than whites, there are still extremely intelligent blacks.

I got that last link from a high IQ society I belong to, that W. R. Jones also belongs to. No, it's not Mensa, it's 20 times as selective as Mensa. There is no shortage of extremely, highly intelligent blacks in the world, even in the United States, where intelligent blacks were systematically killed during slavery and where blacks have been pressured to act stupid, sometimes even by their own people. Shouting people down who say blacks are less intelligent doesn't convince blacks who are unsure about their own intelligence. Facts might.

How the mighty are fallen!

Daniel Pipes used to be an expert on the Middle East. Whether you agreed with him or not you had to respect his opinion and his command of the basic facts about the region.

Not any more. Here's what he wrote on October 9 this year:

preemption justified the invasion of Iraq before Iraqis had attacked the United States

If he doesn't get up to speed with what's happening in the world outside his bubble he's going to be the only guy left in the country who doesn't know that we were lied to about Iraq and its WMD. No one is going to pay any attention to him anymore. Which is a shame. He used to be a great scholar, but I guess he got seduced by Republican money. Mammon. He's willing to criticize Republicans like Grover Norquist, but can't say anything nice about Democrats, even repeating the lie that Bill Clinton never did anything about Al-Qa'ida. He was strangely silent about Obama's wanting to invade Pakistan if necessary. This is still the only page that turns up if you search his site for Obama.

I know most people here don't like him, but he did used to be worth reading.

He's not really anti-Muslim, in fact his "fans" often take him to task on his site for not being anti-Muslim, and when he wrote that Muslims believe the same God that Christians and Jews do most of them really tore into him for it.

I don't know what we should do about him now. Anything? Nothing? Everything?

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