Glad to see it. Let's hope this spills over into other policy areas as well.
The Obama administration, facing a vexed relationship with China on exchange rates, trade, and security issues, is stiffening its approach toward Beijing, seeking allies to confront a newly assertive power that officials now say has little intention of working with the United States.
In a shift from its assiduous one-on-one courtship of Beijing, the administration is trying to line up coalitions — among China’s next-door neighbors and far-flung trading partners — to present Chinese leaders with a unified front on thorny issues like the currency and its territorial claims in the South China Sea.
President Obama may be skipping a trip to a prominent Sikh holy site in India due to worries that wearing the appropriate headgear may reinforce incorrect rumors that he is in fact a Muslim, rather than a Christian.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that plans to visit one of India's most famous attractions had been nixed after it became apparent that the president would be required to cover his head with either a traditional Sikh turban or a skull cap like some Muslims wear. Requests to wear an altered baseball cap were not initially approved.
H. S. Phoolka, a prominent Sikh lawyer in New Delhi, said he was disappointed that Mr. Obama would not visit the temple.
“We have worked so hard to establish in America that Sikhs have a very different identity than Muslims,” Mr. Phoolka said. “It is very unfortunate that even the White House is conveying the message that there is no difference between Muslims and Sikhs.”
I get that the White House is having problems with the GOP slur that Obama is a Muslim. And silly as it sounds, donning the headgear probably would become the subject of a national debate. I do, however, think that this fits part of a larger pattern of what happens when you don't sufficiently stand up to the Republicans on all of their slurs - be they death panels, Maoists in the Cabinets, Obama is a socialist, the stimulus didn't create a single job, not born in the USA," etc.
At some point, the lies grow and feed on each other. Not sufficiently fighting back two years ago, during the campaign, and not fighting back subsequently, has only fed the GOP's lust for disinformation. Yes, the campaign had a very detailed Web page explaining how much of a Christian Obama was. At some point, Obama needs to skip the intellectualizing, and be willing to punch someone in the face (other than a DFH).
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There's a myth that all these "bad" US numbers for life expectancy and such are really the result of America being a "diverse culture" - meaning, "it's all those minorities who aren't doing so well, while we white folks must be riding pretty darn high in the international statistics!"
Yeah, not so much. According to a new study, we white folk in America are doing pretty badly as well. In fact, we seem to be doing worse than non-whites.
For example, compared to 12 other comparable countries (Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), here's how white men and white women in America ranked in terms of 15-year survival rates at the ages of 45 and 65:
45 year old white men: ranked 11th of 13
45 year old white women: ranked 11th of 13
65 year old white men: ranked 11th of 13
65 year old white women: ranked 13th of 13
Oh, and here's a funny thing: The US numbers only get better when you INCLUDE non-whites.
As a consequence, the relative survival gains of non-Hispanic American whites, compared to all residents of the comparison countries, ranked next to last or last for each of the sex and age groups over the full period—even worse than overall performance (note that not all data were available for all countries for all years). Contrary to the diversity hypothesis, including the experience of diverse groups in the US data improves the comparative performance of the United States, since the superior survival gains of other Americans relative to non-Hispanic whites boosts the overall performance of the United States relative to that of other countries.
In 1950, the United States was fifth among the leading industrialized nations with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands The last available measure of female life expectancy had the United States ranked at forty-sixth in the world. As of September 23, 2010, the United States ranked forty-ninth for both male and female life expectancy combined.
Meanwhile, per capita health spending in the United States increased at nearly twice the rate in other wealthy nations between 1970 and 2002. As a result, the United States now spends well over twice the median expenditure of industrialized nations on health care, and far more than any other country as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP).
We compared the performance of the United States to that of twelve nations that have populations of at least seven million and per capita GDP of at least 60 percent of the US per capita GDP since 1975. These nations are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
The Chamber did, however, launch a weird attack yesterday on the messenger - a blog named ThinkProgress. According to the Chamber, ThinkProgress is apparently run by Karl Marx and (that rich international Jew with horns who controls everything) George Soros.
These accusations by a George Soros-funded, anti-business blog (not a "report," as some in the media are saying) are unfounded, deceitful, and completely erroneous. They are a desperate attempt to silence those who support free enterprise, and a diversion by people upset about their grim prospects in the upcoming election.
But as the Washington Post's Sargent notes, the Chamber refused to simply deny ThinkProgress' charge, that they are co-mingling foreign and domestic donations, possibly leading to foreign money illegally financing US elections:
When I asked Ms. Freeman whether the dues from AmChams go into the same general fund that bankrolls the Chamber's ads, she declined to answer. "We don't feel obligated to answer that question because we follow all applicable law, and no foreign money funds our voter education activities," Freeman told me.
If the Chamber were innocent, wouldn't they just deny it?
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Seriously, they've installed a sparkling drinking fountain (in the neighborhood of one of my friends, I told him to go get video). As for me, I'd simply like to be able to walk home at night in DC without worrying about being mugged. In Paris, mugging isn't really an issue in most of the city, even at 3am on a deserted street. So they get bubbly water. More from the City of Paris' Web site.
This is a drive-by, and it won't be news to some of you. But it's not a connection that many have made, since it's a series of dots, where the endpoints aren't obviously related.
Ian Welsh says it simply: Tax cuts for the rich create jobs outside the US. And he's right. If you sweeten the purse of the rich, they put money where it will earn. At this point, that's not the U.S. So if you want jobs here, make investment attractive here, or unattractive abroad. Or both.
Yes, that's managed capitalism (but so are bailouts). And yes, that's contra what Bush defined as "freedom" — meaning freedom for capital to move wherever (you didn't think the Bush definition of "freedom" involved real people, did you?).
But so what. You want jobs here, keep money here. Ian Welsh:
If you can build a factory overseas which produces the same goods for less, meaning more profit for you, why would you build it in the US?
Until that question is adequately answered, by which I mean “until it’s worth investing in the US”, most of the discretionary money of the rich will either go into useless speculative activities like the housing and credit bubbles, which don’t create real growth in the US, or they will go overseas.
There are a number of ways this question can be answered.
Then he lists the ways. A good read, highly recommended.
If when you're done reading, the details float away, just remember — every dollar you hand to the rich in this post-Reagan fever to serve them, means fewer Wheaties for Americans.
If we don't stand up for us, who will?
GP
Update: Edited the last sentence for clarity.
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A young Swedish woman blogs about the story of her sick mother being kicked off the federal benefits system by Sweden's conservative government. Within 24 hours, the story goes viral on Facebook, and is forwarded over 20,000 times. The Facebook attention catches the eye of the media, that then interviews the girl and her mother as the top story on the nightly news, which leads to her being profiled as the top story of the largest Swedish daily.
Twelve hours later, the candidates for the prime minister-ship are meeting for their last debate, two days before the national elections. The story of Emilie and her mother is brought up, and the candidates spend ten minutes discussing health care and conservative budget cuts, all the while the current sitting Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, remains silent until forced to comment on the case by the debate moderator.
Over at Balloon Juice, a progressive American blog, Tim F. wrote a tongue-in-cheek blog post about how the Swedish right needs to attack this girl, just like the American right would do in their stead.
The Swedish right needs to find some way to caricature people like that blogger as an alien ‘other’ who, unlike true Swedes from real Sweden, doesn’t deserve any sympathy at all.
And what do you know? The Swedish right did just that. When confronted with a real life story of a mom and her daughter in need, they went on the attack, and denigrated the girl and her mom. They called her a liar, claiming that her story part of a left-wing plot to win the election. They did exactly what the right-wing in America does whenever they're confronted with a real human being, a real American, who's been hurt by Republican policies and politics. They go on the attack, and attempt to destroy the victim one more time.
"I agree with everyone that this is terrible. BUT how you honestly can sit in an interview on TV4 and claim that this was not planned, admit that you are active in the Left and then pretend that you would not have posted this blog entry if you had known that the reaction would be so great. Embarrassing, embarrassing, embarrassing - why didn't you write about this right after the incident but instead waited until four days before the election? Again, it's tragic that the whole thing has taken place, but to publish now smell desperation! ILL and dirty! "
Here is one small part of her response:
[How] could this have been planned? I don't know if you realize it, but up until now, my blog only got a few visitors a day. That it was like this now came as a shock to me. Even if I did plan to write this to coincide with end of the election, how could I know that it would have such an impact? And do you seriously that I'd name my blog "Chlamydia Letter" if I thought it would turn me into a public figure? It is embarrassing to be "chlamydia girl."
I'm not a public figure.... I'm an ordinary girl. I had only talked to my friends about the situation. But I wanted to make sure that my friends would know, that they'd understand better why I feel the way I feel. The enormous pain inside me has grown long and then wanted it just come out. I figured now would I share with my friends. And it happened to be the night of Wednesday, when I wrote the post for three hours. I did not have the slightest eye on the election campaign, because I have not had the energy. I just wrote about my mom. As I have previously written about my PMS, about how the teaching profession is the world's best job, how I mixed a good drink, or how I feel. I love to write, that's all. The reason why I started this blog is one of the very first posts.
The only thing that is unforgivable is that sick people do not get the support they deserve. Even if it was that this was deliberate - which, as I expressed clearly, it was not - why is it unforgivable, bad and dirty? Those of you who write in this way should learn to appreciate the basic principles of democracy.
I'm in Sweden this week as part of my ongoing work to help develop a progressive blogosphere outside of the US, and have had the unique opportunity to follow the Swedish national elections, which are taking place this Sunday. While, like much of Europe, Sweden has a flurry of political parties from left to right, the two main contenders in the upcoming election are the conservative Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, and his progressive opponent, Mona Sahlin.
While Sweden was an early contender in using the Net for politics in the late 90s, the Swedish Netroots is a relatively recent phenomenon. And like the states, the left side of the blogosphere seems to be kicking more butt in Sweden than the right. One likely reason is that in Sweden, like the US, the right-wing has long had its own echo chamber, while the left did not. 13 of the nation's newspapers lean left, while 59 lean right. The Swedish left-wing blogosphere fills a very real need, and is already having some early, and significant, successes.
The latest, and possibly most interesting, success of the Swedish Netroots (they use the same term as us, "Netroots") took place just two days ago. A young Swedish woman named Emilie wrote a blog post about her mother losing her health insurance. In Sweden, there's a national health plan that covers your living expenses if you lose your job due to failing health. While Emilie's mom has been certified unable to work by her doctors, the government functionaries running the national plan didn't believe her, and just cut off her benefits. Emilie wrote that she and her mother are now considering selling their home, as it's the only way they can be eligible for any more government benefits.
Up until now, Emilie's blog didn't get a lot of traffic. She'd only written three posts in September, four in August, and seven in July. But this post was different. Within a few hours, it started to travel around the Web, and within a day, it had already been shared over 20,000 times on Facebook. By last night, only a day after Emilie wrote her post, the national evening news in Sweden had Emilie and her mother as their top story (see video upper left). By the next morning, it was a front page story in the largest national paper, is now hitting the radio and the wire services, and is the subject of a Facebook page and a viral video poking fun at the Prime Minister. The media then tried to ask the Prime Minister about the story, and he reportedly fled in order to avoid giving an answer.
Here's the viral video that's now going around (it's in English with Swedish subtitles:
All of this because of a relatively small blogger's single post about her mother.
Health care is the number one election issue in Sweden, according to the polls. And the conservative ruling party, until now, has been able to effectively avoid the issue all together in the campaign. Then Emilie struck, and now health care is quickly becoming the top election story in the Swedish news, only 48 hours before the election.
Pretty cool 48 hours for a young girl and her blog.
PS A funny aside to the story. Emilie's blog is called "KLAMYDIABREVET", or, Chlamydia Letter. A Chlamydia Letter in Sweden is the letter the government sends to inform you that someone you've slept with has an STD, and thus you need to be tested. What's ironic about the story going viral is that the Swedish Prime Minister, in a very real way, just got his own Chlamydia Letter only 48 hours before the most important election of his life.
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A local Liberal Party (i.e., conservative party) leader in Stockholm caught using a handicapped parking spot when he's not handicapped. I'm sure he's still scratching his head trying to figure out how they caught him.
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(As always, click any photo to see a larger version.)
Nothing fancy this time around, just wanted to show you a few shots I took in Stockholm the past couple of days. I'm in Sweden at the invitation of the Swedish Netroots. We've been working together for the past year and a half (or longer) on helping building the international progressive Netroots, something I've been working with the Greeks, Spanish and French on as well. This week was the first time I was free, and since I was in Europe already, it seemed a good time to come by - especially with the Swedish national elections happening this coming Sunday, I'll be able to observe how the Swedes electioneer (albeit without understanding a lick of Swedish).
Anyway, it's a great country, and Stockholm is just a lovely city. Can't say enough good things about this place. And, the stereotype is true. Lots of blonds, and the people are just gorgeous.
Ah yes, I took this shot earlier today. Noticed some political party campaigning on a corner, and noticed far too many cops hanging out nearby (this is Sweden, after all, not a ton of violence). Well, I soon figured out that this was the Swedish Democrats party, not to be confused with American Democrats. The Swedish Democrats, I'm told, have troubling ties, and/or a past, with Nazis. Lovely.
This is just a cool HDR photo that I took on my daily walk to and from the hotel. It's a pedestrian sidewalk in downtown Stockholm.
This is a political rally last Sunday for the Swedish Social Democrats (the good guys). Attending was an actor I didn't know, until someone pointed out that he was the father of the blond vampire guy on True Blood. Then I got excited.
A marathon I ran into on Saturday.
A neat new-ish building along the river that evokes a bit of the Sydney Opera House.
And finally another fun HDR photo. The town is simply empty at night, and this was relatively early (10ish).
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That wordy headline says it all. Beneath the summary, these details:
1. The CIA officer is the guy who is accused of revving an electric drill and brandishing a handgun "near the head of an imprisoned terror suspect."
2. The location is a "secret CIA prison in Poland in late 2002 and early 2003, according to several former intelligence officials and a review by the CIA's inspector general."
3. The investigation is the seemingly endless one being performed by DOJ special prosecutor John Durham, many of whose torture investigations seem endless. Scott Horton (my emphasis):
So what has become of those whose involvement in torture was so troubling that even a government inspector general recommended a criminal investigation? While investigations proceed apace overseas, Special Prosecutor John Durham is apparently still considering whether the facts warrant a real one in the United States. Durham has now spent more than a year trying to make this “threshold” determination, something that prosecutors frequently do in an afternoon. In the meantime, the Obama Administration’s position seems to be that the accused should be rewarded for their dubious services with lucrative training contracts.
While the reward aspect is interesting (and has the effect of strengthening the ties to the "reservation" should the ex-officer ever be tempted to go off it), Horton advises us that the real action is the ties to Poland:
The desire to conceal the identities of the CIA agents has more to do with the fact that they face prosecution–not in the United States, but in Poland, on whose soil the crimes were committed. Indeed, the Polish National Prosecutor’s office would very much like to know the exact identity and whereabouts of “Albert,” his supervisor “Mike,” and other CIA personnel involved. The CIA black site where the torture incidents occurred is located at Stare Kiejkuty, in northeastern Poland[.]
Drip, drip, drip. At some point, one of these cracks in the torture wall becomes a full-on break. Obama's DOJ seems now fully involved in the cover-up, even as likelihood of foreign prosecution increases.
I have a feeling that the first break will bring down the whole dam. Or to switch metaphors, this could go from zero to 60 in a nanosecond. Stay tuned; I sure will.
The British newspaper The Daily Telegraph says that saliva samples were collected from 39 Hitler relatives:
A chromosome called Haplogroup E1b1b1 which showed up in their samples is rare in Western Europe and is most commonly found in the Berbers of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, as well as among Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews ...
Haplogroup E1b1b1, which accounts for approximately 18 to 20 per cent of Ashkenazi and 8.6 per cent to 30 per cent of Sephardic Y-chromosomes, appears to be one of the major founding lineages of the Jewish population.
I recently had a hunch that my various American credits were charging me different amounts for purchases made in Europe.
Now put aside for a moment the fact that our credit card companies refuse to use the microchips that European credit cards now have, so you can't even use American credit cards in many places in Europe anymore (we're number one!). The other problem many Americans might not be aware of is that our credit card companies are charging us an extra fee to use our cards outside of the US. (Probably because it's really really hard for them to do the math.)
Now, lest they claim that this fee is being used to pay for the cost of the currency conversion, why is it that every credit card issuer charges a different fee for the same transaction? That's because they're simply gouging us.
Here's a quick comparison of my credit cards:
United States Senate Federal Credit Union 1% conversion fee to use credit card from abroad (i.e., they charge you an additional 1% of your purchase)
ING Direct 2% conversion fee to use credit card from abroad
American Express 2.7% conversion fee to use credit card abroad
Needless to say, I won't be using either ING or AMEX ever against while I'm abroad. It really ticks me off that a European bank (ING) is charging me extra to use my credit card in... Europe. Then there's AMEX, a company that prides itself on members services. In addition to the fact that it's simply inconvenient to use them as your travel card -a lot of places simply refuse to take them - but they charge you the highest annual fee of any other credit card, and they end being the biggest gouger of them all.
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Russia announced Thursday that it will ban all grain exports for the rest of the year, sending wheat prices soaring to a two-year high and raising the possibility of inflated food prices that could throw an already fitful global economy recovery off track.
A severe drought and wildfires have destroyed one-fifth of Russia's crop and forced the country to draw from emergency reserves.
Internationally, wheat prices have increased nearly 50 percent since June, fueling worries about a repeat of the food crisis in 2008 that triggered riots from Bangladesh to Haiti to Mozambique. Wheat prices in the United States are less likely to remain high, experts said, and a bumper crop could put American farmers in a position to benefit from the low supplies elsewhere.
According to Klimaka, an organization that runs a helpline in Greece for people considering suicide, recent months have seen the suicide rate go up from 1 person a day in 2009 to more than 2 per day this year.
According to Violatzis, writes Kathmerini, many of the victims are “men who are no longer earning enough money to provide for their families and feel they no longer have a role to play – people who are going through an identity crisis,” though he also admits suicide is often a multifaceted problem that cannot be explained by merely pointing to the present economic situation.
As we wrote the other day, the ADL joined those calling for an Islamic cultural center not to be built a few blocks away from the former site of the World Trade Center in NYC. While I suspect much of the opposition to the center is based in anti-Muslim bigotry, the ADL claims that its opposition was based solely on concerns that the cultural center might upset some of the families of those who died on September 11.
However, we also must take into consideration the feelings of the families who lost loved ones at Ground Zero.
The lessons of an earlier and different controversy echo in this one. In 1993, Pope John Paul II asked 14 Carmelite Nuns to move their convent from just outside the Auschwitz death camp. The establishment of the convent near Auschwitz had stirred dismay among Jewish groups and survivors who felt that the location was an affront and a terrible disservice to the memory of millions of Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis in the Holocaust.
Just as we thought then that well-meaning efforts by Carmelite nuns to build a Catholic structure were insensitive and counterproductive to reconciliation, so too we believe it will be with building a mosque so close to Ground Zero.
Of course, the ultimate irony in the ADL invoking the Holocaust to justify its position on an issue that doesn't involve the Holocaust at all, is that the ADL would be the first organization to eviscerate any of us who dared invoke the Holocaust to explain anything that didn't directly deal with the Holocaust. And I quote the ADL's own head, Abe Foxman:
No matter how odious, bigoted, biased and unconstitutional Arizona’s new law may be, let’s be clear that there is no comparison between the situation facing immigrants, legal or illegal, in Arizona and what happened in the Holocaust....
Can the same not be said of September 11?
Putting that bit of situational ethics aside for a moment, there is the story of the nuns to deal with. Is it the same thing for Muslims to build an Islamic cultural center a few blocks from Ground Zero, as it is for Catholic nuns to build a convent outside Auschwitz?
First thing, a couple blocks from Ground Zero is the heart of New York City. Right outside the Auschwitz gates is not a comparable urban center where you'd expect much new construction. There'd have probably been almost as much outrage if they tried to build a McDonald's just outside the Auschwitz gates - not true of building a McDonald's a couple of blocks from Ground Zero, I suspect.
Second, there's the role of the Catholic church in WWII, a shady one at best, versus the role of the Muslim faith in September 11. There really isn't a Muslim pope, so the Muslim high command wasn't exactly colluding with the terrorists who took down the WTC in the same way many fear the Catholic church colluded with the Nazis.
Of course, there's more to the story of the nuns at Auschwitz. Funny that the ADL didn't tell us the rest of the story. It seems that the nuns didn't build a convent NEAR Auschwitz, they built a convent IN Auschwitz. This would be akin to the Muslim Cultural Center being built in the remains of the World Trade Center - perhaps a tad more culturally sensitive than a few blocks away. From the NYT:
The presence of the nuns, who live in a convent converted from a two-story building used by the Nazis as a storehouse for the deadly Zyklon B gas, has been an impediment to improved relations between Roman Catholics and Jews in Poland and elsewhere.
Many Jews view the red brick convent just outside the barbed wire perimeter at Auschwitz, where some 1.5 million Jews perished, as an affront to Jewish sensibilities. The World Jewish Congress threatened earlier this year to boycott the ceremonies planned for Monday to mark the ghetto uprising unless the issue of the Carmelite nuns was resolved.
And there's another point: Christians don't own September 11. It was an attack on all Americans, not just Christian Americans. Whereas the controversy over Auschwitz was very much a Christians vs Jews issue (even though more people than just Jews were killed in the Holocaust, Jews still suffered the overwhelming brunt of the assault). From TIME:
[T]he establishment of a Christian institution at a place that will forever symbolize Jewish martyrdom has stirred outrage among Jews.
It struck many at the time that the Christians were involved in a sort of religious imperialism at Auschwitz, not just insensitivity. Do we really think the Muslims are somehow trying to steal September 11 from us? Trying to convert a symbol of "our" religion, or convert us? Whoever "us" is.
I'm just not convinced that the comparison works.
And finally, was September 11, as bad as it was, really as bad as the Holocaust? Really? That's what the ADL seems to now be arguing. And if the ADL comes out and says that September 11 wasn't as bad as the Holocaust - where over 6 million people were killed, 2/3 of the Jews in Europe - then their comparison just doesn't hold water, since per se we should be more appalled by anything seen to undermine something as huge as the Holocaust.
Still feels like the ADL caved to the bigots on this one.
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