Undernews For January 19, 2010

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WHEN WILL BE GET OUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT?

Bob Ellis, ABC, Australia - Fewer deaths occurred in Hiroshima in August 1945 than in Port-au-Prince last week and more people will die there soon than in Rwanda in 1994. Yet the modern global world was unprepared for it, so busy were they with terrorism, which has killed fewer people in the last thirty years than quarrelsome Americans with handguns in the last eight months.

When are we going to get the arithmetic right, and distinguish what threatens us mightily from what threatens us barely at all?

Cuba, a socialist state, is well-prepared for natural disaster and few die there in the hurricane season, and rebuilding happens quickly. The United States, a capitalist nation, was ill-prepared for Hurricane Katrina though experts had warned for years of broken dikes, inundation, chaos, disease and looting, and its response was an international joke.

China, a socialist state, handles earthquakes well. Australia, a social democratic state, handles floods and bushfires fairly well. Yet on the US's back doorstep a million people may die soon, thirsting to death under piles of bricks or in those rapidly-spreading diseases that follow earthquake, unhelped by America whose borrowed billions were that day bombing Kandahar not funding ambulance teams in Port-au-Prince.

When will we get our priorities right, and realize our biggest foe is wild nature not militant Islam and do such things as we can to survive it?

Thirty per cent of earth's carbon asphyxiation comes each year from bushfires, and for a hundred billion in the next ten years we could fly a lot of Elvises over Indonesian forests round the clock and we do not. We're installing electronic peekaboo machines in airports instead, though strangely not in theatre foyers or football stadiums, lest one more Underpants Bomber board a plane. Half a billion dollars would redirect an eastern river and save the Lachlan, Murrumbidgee and Murray but we're spending the money instead on gyms and computers for private schools. While you've been reading this three Haitians have died under heaped-up stone unrescued and an AIG executive has earned two hundred dollars for helping wreck the world economy, and he'll earn three thousand more in the next hour while twenty more Haitians die.

When will we get our priorities right, and learn how useless the free market is in dealing with tsunamis, earthquakes, Aboriginal health, African AIDS, Middle Eastern pogroms, Chinese tyranny and the sort of shameful poverty that breeds terrorists everywhere and sends them walking in explosive underpants out of universities into airline waiting rooms? When will we understand that twenty dollars a week is better spent on tax-funded air ambulances and Elvises and hot rocks and wind power and stem cells and solar cars than on oil magnates who are killing the planet as we speak?

You can argue that Haiti was a basket-case already and had been that way for decades. But in those selfsame rapacious decades capitalist America had been refusing aid to it, and sending back Haitian immigrants who might not then have starved, or whored themselves, or taken up voodoo if America had taken them in, and not spent their money instead on the drug-running, election-cheating Karzai brothers for reasons that altered each month. Why was faraway Afghanistan more urgent to America than Haiti, its near neighbor? Why? Oh yes, that's right, a certain tall Saudi was thought to be living there so it had to be bombed to smithereens. Makes all the sense in the world, when you come to think of it. . .

Why are we getting it so wrong? Why are we so afraid of tax, and so welcoming of useless executives on ten million a year, or a hundred and forty an hour around the clock? Why are we spending so much of our money on them, and so little on bushfire prevention or flood rescue? Why are so many people dying because we find a young stranger's jockstrap more interesting than the end of life on earth? Are some people making money, perhaps, out of emphasising the unimportant and spinning the planet's fate into invisibility? Arms manufactures, oil barons, Halliburton, Blackwater and so on?

Could be, old friend, could be.

Helicopter-gunships have been illegally over-flying Pakistani villages while you've been reading this, and they could have been rescuing buried children in Port au Prince.

Was this well done? Was this honorably done? How clever was it? How useful in discouraging future terrorists to reject jihad and choose capitalism instead?

How are we doing, old friend?

Are we winning?

Or are they?

SCOTT BROWN'S PRIORITIES

Think Progress - State Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate special election, voted on October 17, 2001 to deny financial aid to Red Cross rescue workers who had volunteered with 9/11 recovery efforts. As a state representative at the time, Brown was one out of only three legislators who had opposed the overwhelmingly bipartisan measure.

At a campaign rally today in Hyannis, Think Progress caught up with Brown for comment on why he voted against the measure:

TP: In 2001, you voted against 9/11 recovery workers, giving them aid, do you have any comment on this story?

BROWN: Yes, it was a time when our budget was down. We had a lot of cuts unfortunately, and we had to take care of our own priorities first.

During the same month Brown was voting down efforts to support 9/11 rescue workers, he was pushing a bill to appropriate a tax-subsidized bond to build a golf course in Norfolk, a city in his district. "Priorities," indeed.

Also during the same period, he was busy fighting for tax subsidies for corporate interests. According to a 2002 article in the Lowell Sun, Brown scored a perfect pro-corporate tax subsidy rating in the months following his anti-9/11 rescue workers vote:

INDICATORS

UN - There are over 370 million indigenous people in some 90 countries, living in all regions of the world. Poverty rates are significantly higher among indigenous peoples compared to other groups. While they constitute 5 per cent of the world's population, they are 15 per cent of the world's poor. Most indicators of well-being show that indigenous peoples suffer disproportionately compared to non-indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples face systemic discrimination and exclusion from political and economic power; they continue to be over-represented among the poorest, the illiterate, the destitute; they are displaced by wars and environmental disasters; indigenous peoples are dispossessed of their ancestral lands and deprived of their resources for survival, both physical and cultural; they are even robbed of their very right to life.

In more modern versions of market exploitation, indigenous peoples see their traditional knowledge and cultural expressions marketed and patented without their consent or participation.

Of the some 7,000 languages today, it is estimated that more than 4,000 are spoken by indigenous peoples. Language specialists predict that up to 90 per cent of the world's languages are likely to become extinct or threatened with extinction by the end of the century.

PASSINGS: DAVID MALLERY

Last May the Review received an email from a reader praising the work the editor and his wife had done in Washington as they prepared to move to Maine. He wrote: "It is so interesting and moving to hear the two of you reflecting on those years, being young and adventurous there at a time when things were so intensely alive and full of promise. So clearly you have nourished that scene for 40 years as well as having been nourished by it."

Editors get nice letters like that and they get nasty ones, but what was exceptional of about this one was that it was yet another from an 86-year old man who had taught me English at Germantown Friends School in the 1950s and was still egging me on over a half century later. Sadly, however, I won't be getting any more such letters, however, because David Mallery passed on January 16.- Sam

Dick Wade, Head, Germantown Friends School - The GFS students in his English classes (1946-59) and the thousands of educators he taught for over 50 years have lost a dear friend and mentor. He will be remembered for his effervescence, his eternal optimism and his ability to be truly present for each person he encountered. . . David taught and directed at Germantown Friends until 1959, when he left on a project traveling around the country to talk to children about the influence of their school experience on their personal values. This exploration led to a career in education from the perspective of observer, investigator, and advisor. Through presentations and workshops he became a leader in independent schools.

Sam Smith, Multitudes - Ed Gordon, David Mallery, and Bob Boynton were the school's English teachers. Mr. Gordon was the toughest of the lot, a smallish, well-dressed man as defensive of our right to say what we wanted as he was insistent that we say it precisely and clearly. . . We would try to trap him, but it was not easy. One day, one of the students demanded of Mr. Gordon why -- given his propensity for free expression -- he always wore gray flannel suits. Mr. Gordon said quietly, "It makes it easier to say what I think."

We knew all about the meaning of gray flannel suits, thanks to Mr. Mallery, who had introduced us to the man in one, and other subversive literature of the 50s such as The Organization Man and Generation of Vipers. Mr. Mallery accomplished with enthusiasm what Mr. Gordon achieved with discipline. I took naturally to the skepticism of the social critics, for I had found much of my world not to my liking but had not realized that one could make a living saying so. And I devoured Ernest Hemingway because his stories were tough and melancholic and he didn't gush adjectives, metaphors and similes like so many of the writers we were meant to admire. In The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, he said that some things lose their meaning when they get all mouthed up. I appreciated the way he didn't use words as much as the way he did.

Several of the bright, proto-literary girls in my class -- who tolerated my less intellectual ways as though I were a colorful but unreliable writer to be both valued and pitied -- became enthralled with T.S. Eliot and Yeats and spoke about them in ways I did not comprehend. Girls, it was understood, would do anything for the handsome Mallery, leaving even proto-literary boys to bring up the rear.

Still, it was a pleasant rear, for Mr. Mallery usually found something good to say, gave us courage to challenge the world and provided daily evidence that growing up did not have to mean the end of joy. And when that didn't work, he once walked atop a row of desks to make his point.

He even inspired me to write a play, a maudlin love story involving a foreign correspondent. In his normal red ink, Mr. Mallery wrote:

Intensely interesting, Sam -- there is talk here that pierces the mind... You have values and feelings made eloquently articulate.

It being only eleventh grade, I believed him. It was thankfully the last play I ever wrote, but it was one of the moments that confirmed that I wanted to be a writer. (Years later, when this essay appeared in a school publication, Mallery wrote me, "But I was right.")

In one essay for Mr. Mallery I even took on the mythic figure of William Whyte who had proposed in Fortune placing an employee's IQ and personality test records, religion, political affiliation, hobbies, type of car and salary all on a single card for use as needed.

It was probably a satire, but I took it seriously and inveighed against the device calling it "the embryo of a police state and a place for a would-be dictator to hang his hat and go to work. . . Once the individual has lost the security of privacy, we are no longer safe from the immediate overthrow of our principles by the ever-waiting demagogue.". . .

David Mallery called my critique of Whyte a "a good, vigorous and heartening response." And when I listened to a recording of Arthur Honnegers King David for the first time and asked Mallery, who was about to help stage a performance of the work, where the line between noise and music was, he said simply, "That's for you to decide."

On the other hand, my attack on Lillian Smith's The Journey brought Mr. Mallery out of his ebulliency:

Lillian Smith is not a friend of mine, or of my mothers. So it is with no bias that I say your attack on her is tiresome, and inappropriate for this particular job... Since you do haggle over her in the way your do, read her again, after a good dinner. Yours, feeling nailsy, though admiring of Sam.

FRANCE, CARRIBEAN COUNTRIES GET BLOCKED BY U.S. IN HAITI

Financial Times - As Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General, headed for Haiti to see for himself the extent of the worst humanitarian disaster that the world body has had to cope with in decades, concern grew over delays in the airlift to the capital's airport, which is under US control.

Alain Joyandet, French co-operation minister, told reporters at the airport he had protested to Washington via the US ambassador about the US military's management of the airport where he said a French medical aid flight had been turned away. . .

Mr Joyandet's complaint underlined the frustration of relief teams dependent on the single runway at the airport to ferry in supplies if they were to avoid 24-hour delays involved in bringing supplies in by road from the neighboring Dominican Republic.

The French news agency AFP also quoted people trying to leave Haiti as complaining that the US was giving priority to its own citizens. . .

Trinidad Express - The Caribean Community's emergency aid mission to Haiti, comprising heads of government and leading technical officials, failed to secure permission Friday to land at that devastated country's airport, now under the control of the United States.

Consequently, the Caricom 'assessment mission', that was to determine priority humanitarian needs resulting from the mind-boggling earthquake disaster of Haiti, had to travel back from Jamaica to their respective home destinations..

On Friday afternoon the US State Department confirmed signing two 'Memoranda of Understanding' with the Government of Haiti that made 'official that the United State as is in charge of all inbound and outbound flights and aid off-loading.'. . .

Prior to the US taking control of Haiti's airport, a batch of some 30 Cuban doctors had left Havana, following Wednesday's earthquake, to join more than 300 of their colleagues who have been working there for more than a year.

Last evening the frustration suffered by the Caricom mission to get landing permission was expected to be raised in a scheduled meeting at Jamaica's Norman Manley International Airport with US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton.

Jamaica's Prime Minister Bruce Golding who was making arrangements for the meeting with Clinton, following her visit earlier in the day to witness the devasation of the capital Port-au-Prince, said he could not comment on details to be discussed.

He, however, told this correspondent: 'I appreciate the chaos and confusion at Haiti's airport, where there is just one operational runway. But Haiti is a member of Caricom and we simply have to be facilitated and the truth is, there is hardly a functioning government in Haiti...'

Asked whether the difficulties encountered by the Caricom mission may be related to reports that US authorities were not anxious to facilitate landing of aircraft from Cuba and Venezuela, Prime Minister Golding said he could 'only hope that there is no truth to such immature thinking in the face of the horrific scale of Haiti's tragedy. . . '

A contigent of some 150 members of the Jamaica Defence Force has since established a camp with medical facilities in the vicinity of Haiti's airport.

STUPID NETWORK EXECUTIVE TRICKS

Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing - When Jack Benny fans discovered that the CBS vaults contained some 25 original Jack Benny TV show episodes previously thought lost, they rejoiced. They approached the network for release of the public-domain footage, even offering to foot the bill for digital transfer and preservation. CBS balked, insisting that the fan club get approval from the Benny estate. No problem: Jack Benny's descendants were only too glad to have his original TV shows rescued from obscurity and given to the world.

But CBS balked again, citing unspecified "issues" (presumably potential copyrights in the score or other materials). Basically, CBS has decided that it could cost too much to pay a lawyer to figure out if they can release these films -- or even turn them over to Benny's fans and family for release -- and so it has decided to simply abandon them, sealing them back up in the vault forever.

This isn't how it's supposed to work. In the Constitution's progress clause, Congress is empowered to "promote the progress of the arts" through copyright. When copyright creates these deadlocks that doom America's artistic heritage to history's scrapheap, copyright needs to change.

CRUISE SHIP DOCKS AT PRIVATE BEACH IN HAITI FOR BARBEQUE AND WATER SPORTS

Guardian, UK - Sixty miles from Haiti's devastated earthquake zone, luxury liners dock at private beaches where passengers enjoy jet ski rides, para sailing and rum cocktails delivered to their hammocks.

The 4,370-berth Independence of the Seas, owned by Royal Caribbean International, disembarked at the heavily guarded resort of Labadee on the north coast on Friday; a second cruise ship, the 3,100-passenger Navigator of the Seas is due to dock.

The Florida cruise company leases a picturesque wooded peninsula and its five pristine beaches from the government for passengers to "cut loose" with water sports, barbecues, and shopping for trinkets at a craft market before returning on board before dusk. Safety is guaranteed by armed guards at the gate.

The decision to go ahead with the visit has divided passengers. The ships carry some food aid, and the cruise line has pledged to donate all proceeds from the visit to help stricken Haitians. But many passengers will stay aboard when they dock; one said he was "sickened".

"I just can't see myself sunning on the beach, playing in the water, eating a barbecue, and enjoying a cocktail while [in Port-au-Prince] there are tens of thousands of dead people being piled up on the streets, with the survivors stunned and looking for food and water," one passenger wrote on the Cruise Critic internet forum. . .

The company recently spent $55m updating Labadee. It employs 230 Haitians and the firm estimates 300 more benefit from the market. The development has been regarded as a beacon of private investment in Haiti; Bill Clinton visited in October. Some Haitians have decried the leasing of the peninsula as effective privatisation of part of the republic's coastline.

NY TIMES TO ADOPT PAID VISITS

NY Magazine - New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

One personal friend of Sulzberger said a final decision could come within days, and a senior newsroom source agreed, adding that the plan could be announced in a matter of weeks. (Apple's tablet computer is rumored to launch on January 27, and sources speculate that Sulzberger will strike a content partnership for the new device, which could dovetail with the paid strategy.) It will likely be months before the Times actually begins to charge for content, perhaps sometime this spring. . .

. . The decision to go paid is monumental for the Times, and culminates a yearlong debate that grew contentious, people close to the talks say. In favor of a paid model were Keller and managing editor Jill Abramson. Nisenholtz and former deputy managing editor Jon Landman, who was until recently in charge of nytimes.com, advocated for a free site.

. . What makes the decision so agonizing for Sulzberger is that it involves not just business considerations, but ultimately a self-assessment of just what Times journalism is worth to the world. This fall, Keller told the Observer that at some point, the decision is a "gut call about what we think the audience will accept." Hanging over the deliberations is the fact that the Times' last experience with pay walls, Times Select, was deeply unsatisfying and exposed a rift between Sulzberger and his roster of A-list columnists, particularly Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd, who grew frustrated at their dramatic fall-off in online readership.

OBAMA TO RIGHT OF MCCAIN, VOLKER AND WALL STREET JOURNAL ON KEY FINANCIAL ISSUE

Miles Mogulescu, Huffington Post - On Friday, The Wall Street Journal editorial page joined such noted left-wing radicals as Alan Greenspan, John McCain, and Paul Volker in support of restoring the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks which did so much to prevent economic meltdowns between the 1933 passage of the Glass-Steagall Act and its repeal in 1999 by a bipartisan coalition of Congressional Republicans and Clinton Democrats led by Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.

In an editorial (also opposing the Obama administration's proposed bank tax), The Wall Street Journal wrote:

"A better idea is to do the hard policy work of creating a plan that. . . separates traditional banking from hedge-fund trading, as Bank of England Governor Mervyn King and former Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volker have suggested."

In December, the unlikely pair of John McCain and Washington Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell announced the proposed McCain-Cantwell bill which would restore Glass-Steagall's wall between commercial banks and investment banks. . .

Volker has been one of the strongest voices for separating commercial and investment banking:

"As a general matter, I would exclude from commercial banking institutions, which are potential beneficiaries of official (i.e. taxpayer) financial support, certain risky activities entirely suitable for our capital markets. Ownership or sponsorship of hedge funds and private equity funds should be among the prohibited activities. So should in my view a heavy volume of proprietary trading with its inherent risks."

Volker told The New York Times,

"People say I'm old fashioned and banks can no longer be separated from non-bank activity. That argument brought us to where we are today."

So what is the Obama administration's reaction to the proposals of its campaign's erstwhile economic guru? An anonymous spokesperson from Obama's Treasury Department stated,

"I think going back to Glass-Steagall is like going back to the Walkman."

Newsweek reports that opposition from the Obama administration makes "Senate prospects for the success of the McCain-Cantwell bill. . . seem bleak at best." According to Newsweek,

"Obama administration officials have dismissed the idea that the financial sector should or can be changed in more fundamental ways than they are now proposing. You can't turn back the clock, they say."

Such far-left radicals as Greenspan, Volker, McCain, and The Wall Street Journal now think we can and must turn back the clock. Of course Obama's chief economic advisor is Larry Summers who was one of the chief architects in repealing Glass-Steagall. . .

CIA DOC REVEALS OKAY TO DESTROY TORTURE EVIDENCE

Daily Kos - A January 8 release of documents in the ACLU FOIA lawsuit seeking materials related to the CIA's destruction of videotapes of interrogators using "enhanced interrogation techniques" has revealed the first evidence of a precise instruction for the destruction of those tapes. . .

The approval came in the form of "a two-page cable discussing a proposal and granting permission to destroy the videotapes." The cable was sent from "HQ" to the "Field" on November 8, 2005, the same day an earlier request was made from the "Field". Confirmation of the destruction of the tapes was already revealed in a cable "from the field to CIA headquarters, confirming the destruction of the videotapes."

ACLU HITS EXCESSIVE COMPUTER SEARCHES BY CUSTOMS POLICE

ACLU - Privacy campaigners are continuing a legal challenge against random laptop border searches by US customs amid concerns there may be a racial bias in those delayed and inconvenienced by stop and search powers introduced as part of the war on terror.

The ACLU also argues that searches of mobile phones by US border agents in the absence of any reason to be suspicious also pose a unwarranted invasion of privacy while delivering few tangible benefits.

Customs and Border Protection agents searched over 1,500 electronic devices at the US border over a period of nine months between October 2008 and June 2009, according to documents obtained by the ACLU as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The documents also show that customs agents forwarded electronic files found on travelers' devices to other agencies almost 300 times.

Some of the travelers inconvenienced by these searches complained that they were ceaselessly accused of wrongdoing or otherwise embarrassed or inconvenienced by the searches, which agents are not obliged to justify under tightened regulations in force since July 2008. The policy was started by the Bush administration and continued by the Obama government.

The ACLU is concerned that travelers have been left unable to carry medical records, financial information, and photos when they travel without the possibility of government inspection for no good reason.

"The CBP's ability to take and view the personal files of anyone passing through U.S. borders without any suspicion not only presents an inconvenience to travelers, but also fails to protect sensitive personal information that is commonly stored in laptops and cell phones," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group. "Fundamental constitutional problems with this policy exist, and must be addressed."

"The government has a legitimate interest in searching electronic devices where there is individualized suspicion of wrongdoing, but CBP's policy allows officials to exercise their power arbitrarily," she added.

U.S. INTERNET SPEED RANKS POORLY

Mashable - According to Akamai's Q3 State of the Internet report, the United States' internet speed did not qualify for a place in the top ten list of countries with the fastest internet in the world, and its average overall speed has actually decreased by 2.4% year-over-year from 2008 to 2009.

The United States actually ranked 18th out of 203 nations tested in terms of average connection speeds, falling behind speed leaders like South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong. . .

If you live in Delaware, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, or Utah you can be quite pleased with your region's Q3 performance as they each increased upwards of 15% in average connection speed from Q2 measurements.

OBAMAPHILES RUNNING OUT OF EXCUSES

The Obamaphiles are scratching around for anything that might work . Eleanor Clift, whose knee jerks so badly she qualifies for early handicap airplane boarding, cites a CQ reports that says, "CQ rates Obama higher than any president in the last five decades in working his will on Capitol Hill, surpassing even the fabled Lyndon Johnson. Obama's success rate in the House and Senate on votes where he staked out a clear position was 96.7 percent, beating previous record-holder Johnson's 93 percent in 1965."

Says Clift: "People may not be talking about Obama's stimulus package in 2050, but fair-minded historians looking back will give him credit for pulling the economy back from the brink, and the $787 billion stimulus bill that he passed during his first hundred days with almost no Republican support was critical to the rescue effort. If Obama gets health-care reform, which seems likely, that will be an enduring achievement despite all the partisan nitpicking. He will have accomplished these things without some of the structural advantages LBJ enjoyed. The filibuster, which has its poisonous history in Southern segregationist efforts to kill civil-rights legislation, has morphed into a routine requirement for a supermajority of 60 votes on everything."

Rachel Madow got real excited about this, too, as she interview sometime historian sometime hack Michael Beschloss:
[][] MADDOW: Empirically, whether or not you like Obama's policies, but from a pure quantitative perspective in terms of what this president has done-how does President Obama's first year stack up against previous presidencies?

BESCHLOSS: Well, he is the equal of Franklin Roosevelt in his first year, LBJ in 1965 or Ronald Reagan in 1981. You know, Obama last year, or two years ago during the campaign, kept on saying, "I want to be a transforming president," like Roosevelt, like Johnson, like Reagan. And the breadth of the kind of things he has done-you're absolutely right to talk about them-I think suggests that that's what he's going to be. .

MADDOW: That he'd be dealing with the economy. Can you give us some historical context for what challenges he was handed?

BESCHLOSS: It's almost unique in the last century. When FDR came in in 1933, we were in a terrible Great Depression, but in terms of foreign policy, the world was fairly quiet. And Roosevelt could spend his first term basically concentrating on the economy.

If you look at a case, for instance, like LBJ coming in in 1963, had to deal with the death of John Kennedy. But, again, the world was relatively quiet. He was able to concentrate on his domestic program.

In contrast, look at Obama coming in just a year ago. We were teetering--as you said--on the brink of another Great Depression. We had two wars, a struggle with terrorism. This is someone who had to deal with things on all sorts of fronts and engage with every single one of them. [][]

Fortunately, Paul Rosenberg at Open Left cut through the crap:

[][] News flash: Al Qaeda is not the Soviet Union or Red China. The military threats in LBJ's world dwarfed those in Obama's no matter how much Bush/Cheney Kool Aid the denizens of Versailles may drink. What's more, the mere fact that you face a major crisis such as the financial meltdown doesn't really count for much if your response is basically to turn your back on it.

Comparing Obama to FDR is nothing short of laughable. Heck, even on foreign policy, FDR's Good Neighbor Policy was more profound than anything Obama has done. But even the comparison to LBJ is patently absurd as well. Here's a list of Johnson's major accomplishments in his Great Society agenda that were passed in 1965, his first year after winning election on his own:

Civil rights
* Voting Rights Act of 1965
* Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965

War on Poverty
* Upward Bound
* Head Start

Education
* Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965
* Higher Education Act of 1965

Health
* Medicare
* Medicaid

Arts and Culture
* National Endowment for the Arts
* National Endowment for the Humanities

Consumer protection
* Cigarette Labeling Act of 1965

Environment
* Land and Water Conservation Act of 1965
* Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965
* Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act of 1965

The Civil Rights or health care accomplishments alone dwarf everything that Obama has accomplished this year. But one doesn't even have to look at such mega-epochal pieces of legislation. Consider how profoundly America has been changed by the Cigarette Labeling Act, or the Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act. . . The comparison between Obama and LBJ is not even close to being close.

LBJ was an effective President. Obama is an efficient one. The difference is night and day. The only real valid comparison between the two men is that Obama is doubling down on LBJ's tragic mistake in Vietnam with his own embrace of the neo-cons brain-dead "long war" ideology.[][]

GREAT MOMENTS IN ELECTIONS

Romanian presidential candidate Mircea Geoana has blamed his loss on attacks of negative energy during a debate by aides of President Traian Basescu

"During the Dec. 3 debate. . . people who were working for Basescu in this domain were present to the right of the camera. . . I saw them and I know who they are," Said his wife: [Geonana] was very badly attacked, he couldn't concentrate."

Earlier an aide had spoke of a "violet flame" conspiracy and that the dastardly Bascescu had dressed in purple on Thursday which apparently in Romania helps your vote total.

THE DISASTER RELIEF DISASTER

Danny Schechter, Media Channel - There is a tragic triage underway in Haiti thanks to screw-ups in the US and western response, and in part because of the objectively tough conditions in Haiti that blocked access and made the delivery of food, water and services difficult. But the planners should have known that.

Look at the TV coverage. "Saving Haiti" is the title CNN has given to its coverage. It shows us all the planes landing, and donations coming in and celebrity response on one hand, and then the problems/failures to actually deliver aid on the other.

Much of the coverage focuses on the upbeat - people being saved. But despite that frame, which highlights a compassionate America's response, the reality of what's happening in Haiti is only barely getting through. It's not pretty. . .

It's like Obama's plan to stop foreclosures through modifying loans. Great idea, but only a handful of homeowners have benefited. There is a yawning gap between the idea and its execution. . .

Why? One global report explained:

"United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon emphasized the importance of the first 72 hours following the 12 January disaster. But already much of that crucial time has been spent attempting to assess the situation. The structures usually responsible for dealing with civilian emergencies have been unable to respond effectively due to widespread destruction of national and international power structures."

Lacking outside support, civilians have worked communally to try to save their own families. Supplies were sent but many have yet to get out of the airport. Troops have not been assigned to help deliver water or guard medical facilities. There is a fear of the wrath of a people that are pissed off at hearing about aid and money donated, and then seeing nothing trickling down into their neighborhoods.

And there is a deeper fear - a political fear. With President Aristide, the man the US considers too radical for its tastes, anxious to return, there is fear that a possible revolt against the lack of help could turn angry and political.

Hillary Clinton keeps telling the Haitians that we are their friends - but many doubt it. They know that Aristide's Lavalas party is the most popular in Haiti and wants a more profound transformation than the US wants to allow. It had been banned from taking part in scheduled elections next month, that are likely to be canceled now. Haiti's president Preval is weak and dependent on US largesse.

They also know that in the aftermath of earthquakes, like the one that rocked Manaqua, Nicaraga in the 1970s, there can be revolution. They don't want that to happen in Haiti. They also know how volatile the country is, in part because of neglect by the West over the years.

Private help is not getting through either. Western Union offices are still closed in a country that relies on foreign remittances as a lifeline. The media is finally admitting the aid mission is failing, although that's not the word used - they say the relief effort is "troubled!" Here's the headline in the NY Times: "Officials Strain to Distribute Aid to Haiti as Violence Rises." The piece continues: "A sprawling assembly of international officials and aid workers struggled to fix a troubled relief effort."

The Guardian/Observer focuses on a water delivery crisis. The article doesn't ask why armed troops were not assigned to protecting drivers:

"Hundreds of thousands of Haitians are in desperate need of drinking water because of an earthquake-damaged municipal pipeline and truck drivers either unable or unwilling to deliver their cargo.

"'Many drivers are afraid of being attacked if they go out, some drivers are still missing in the disaster and others are out there searching for missing relatives,' said Dudu Jean, a 30-year-old driver who was attacked on Friday when he drove into the capital's sprawling Cite Soleil slum."

The lack of water has become one of the greatest dangers facing Haitians in part because earthquake survivors stay outdoors all day in the heat out of fear of aftershocks and unstable buildings.

But there is something else going on.

The disaster planners have an agenda that goes beyond just saving lives. They want to use the crisis to rebuild Haiti along lines they support. (ie. support of property rights etc) So far they have not spoken about how policies backed by the United States through the Caribbean Basin Initiative were responsible for uprooting peasants from the countryside to move them to the city to be a cheap labor reserve. In that Reagan era effort, pigs were killed and imported food replaced home grown varieties to benefit US suppliers. Debt dependence grew - classic imperialist policies.

. . Let's admit it, this disaster response is itself a disaster. And it's helping promote a new disaster to come.

. . How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent – there are two fire stations in the entire nation – and infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for "nature" to finish it off?

Good question. One of the many we should be asking. In the meantime, we need the press to start asking tougher questions and exposing a Katrina-like response that is still losing countless lives.

A country in pain deserves relief. Not more pain.

DRUG WAR CELEBRATES 40 YEARS OF DISASTROUS FAILURE

Hugh O'Shaughnessy, Independent - After 40 years of defeat and failure, America's "war on drugs" is being buried in the same fashion as it was born - amid bloodshed, confusion, corruption and scandal. US agents are being pulled from South America; Washington is putting its narcotics policy under review, and a newly confident region is no longer prepared to swallow its fatal Prohibition error. Indeed, after the expenditure of billions of dollars and the violent deaths of tens of thousands of people, a suitable epitaph for America's longest "war" may well be the plan, in Bolivia, for every family to be given the right to grow coca in its own backyard.

The "war", declared unilaterally throughout the world by Richard Nixon in 1969, is expiring as its strategists start discarding plans that have proved futile over four decades: they are preparing to withdraw their agents from narcotics battlefields from Colombia to Afghanistan and beginning to coach them in the art of trumpeting victory and melting away into anonymous defeat. Not surprisingly, the new strategy is being gingerly aired in the media of the US establishment, from The Wall Street Journal to the Miami Herald.

Prospects in the new decade are thus opening up for vast amounts of useless government expenditure being reassigned to the treatment of addicts instead of their capture and imprisonment. And, no less important, the ever-expanding balloon of corruption that the "war" has brought to heads of government, armies and police forces wherever it has been waged may slowly start to deflate. . . .

RECOVERED HISTORY: THE DRUG STORY 40 YEARS AGO

Since the Independent reminded us that it has been 40 years since Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs, we thought it might be interesting to look at some of the articles we published on the topic in 1970 (when the Review was the DC Gazette). Some excerpts:

John E. Ingersoll, director of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, [strongly opposes] a bill offered by Senator Harold Hughes that would label dependence on drugs "an illness or disease." Ingersoll said this could be "a serious impediment to criminal prosecutions," which the Nixon Administration apparently considers more important than kicking habits.

Erbin Crowell - The Public Safety Committee of the City Council held two days of hearings this month to hear scientific and public testimony about marijuana. Most what it heard; marijuana, scientifically, is a mild conscious altering drug; it is not addictive, nor does it lead to the use of addicting drugs; it has been known and used and studied for literally thousands of years, and no physiological damage whatsoever has been discovered; instances of adverse mental effects resulting from its use are extremely rare. Most significant to the Council's hearing - and to a good number of kids who are in prison on pot convictions - was the fact, reiterated by Surgeon General Jesse L. Steinfeld, that "in the case of marijuana, legal penalties were originally assigned with total disregard for medical and scientific evidence of the properties of the drug or its effects."

"I know of no clearer instance in which the punishment for infraction of the law is more harmful than the crime," Steinfeld concluded.

That touches on the ostensible reason the Council is so concerned, but Catfish Turner probably got closer to the reality of the matter when he noted that no one in the white establishment was concerned when the use of pot was limited to Mexican Americans , ghetto blacks and a few musicians.

"It's only when it gets into your suburbia and your white middle class colleges that you begin to get at all concerned, " Turner said. And Petey Greene, who testified alongside Turner agreed: "See, you people are just conning. . .

"What?" Councilman Daugherty asked

"Faking, man, just faking. You're showing all this concern not for the community but just because some congressmen's kids got busted. " Marijuana smoking is now so widespread among the white middle and upper classes, said Greene, that "probably some of you up there got a little nickel (5-dollar) bag you go back to when this is over."

The government has never worried about lying to the ghetto, but now, Catfish said, it is realizing that it "has got to stop telling these youngsters all these lies 'cause they know you're lying and you know they do." Greene "testified" on behalf of his grandmother, whose opinions on marijuana are based on practical experience. She once told her grandson to quit: "Petey, you gotta stop smoking those reefers, because they make you too hungry, and I can't buy all that extra food." Later, on comparing its effects with those of alcohol, "She said she'd rather me smoke reefers and just sit and smile at people than drink that old wine and come in throwing chairs around."

While [Republican] Council Chairman Hahn admitted that the Council has no power to make the use and possession of marijuana legal, "it may have the power by regulation to create an alternate lighter penalty for the use and possession of marijuana." And more important, Hahn told reporters afterwards, the hearings provided an opportunity both to hear from and educate the public.

So the scientists were called in. (There were only a couple of cops guarding the Council chambers on that day and about five times that number the next morning when "the public" was to be heard.) . . Harvard's director of psychiatric research, Dr. Lester Grinspoon, called for immediate legalization under controls similar to those now on alcohol. . . Much of the other scientific testimony said as much about the testifiers as it did about pot. The John Hopkins Drug Abuse Center and the Pharmacology Departments of Howard and George Washington attempted to convince the Council that "we know so little" and that what was needed was a great deal more research money, presumably to their own institutions.

The testimony of representatives of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs was notable for its meekness. Although the narcs still refer to marijuana as a killer drug before high school audiences, still try to imply that pot inevitably and immediately leads to heroin, still pass out 1930 "s posters of marijuana as the Grim Reaper - they backed off under Council questioning. The narc's Dr. Milton Joffe even allowed that although "legalizing simply for hedonistic purposes" was not warranted, "I'm not against pleasure."

And there were few surprises in the public testimony from about thirty individuals and organizations. Judge Charles Halleck recommended more realistic penalties, since present laws tend to cause the community "to lose faith in the entire system of justice. " James H. Heller of the National Capital Area Civil Liberties Union called for legalization of pot. He said he saw no reason that it should be treated any different from alcohol. (He admitted to having tried grass once, "but it didn't have any effect. " "Maybe you just didn't know how to smoke it, " Councilwoman Polly Shackleton consoled him.)

Rev. John Bussey, President of the D. C. Baptist Ministers Conference, called marijuana evil and sinful and warned against the terrors of bending or reducing any penalties. "This is not the time to let up," said Bussey. Dr. Seymour Albert, speaking for the D. C. Medical Society, promised to testify only on medical grounds but could cite no medical evidence for his opinion that pot was more harmful than alcohol, expressed worry that "marijuana is only used in a deliberative effort to escape reality, " said he had no opinion on legal matters but that marijuana should "be not legalized," and concluded that the penalties should be "left up to lawyers."

Virginia Riley of the D. C. Bar Association Mental Health Committee took the time to testify that the Bar Association had no opinion and no position on the matter. Father Robert Judge, a dean at Georgetown University, estimated that as many as 85% of Georgetown freshmen have used marijuana at one time or another. He felt that continued use might indicate a tendency to "cop out, " but admitted that "often the continuing users are the better students. " He recommended that legal sanctions against pot "should be extremely minimized."

The D. C. Republican Central Committee asked for more study, expressed the hope that it could after a year or so "make a more mature judgment, " and under questioning hinted that penalties should be reduced. Dr. Dan Fivel of the D. C. Democratic Central Committee submitted its resolution that all penalties be eliminated "for possession, use, and distribution of marijuana except insofar as may be required to control sale to minors and use by persons operating motor vehicles. " . . .

A couple of ex-addicts who had smoked, shot and drunk virtually everything they could get their hands on testified to the mild nature of pot. One even told the Council that it was liquor-not marijuana-that led him to heroin. The Capitol Hill Action Group recommended legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana- the tax revenues,would be significant to this tax-poor colony. Terry Becker, a Quicksilver Times reporter, surprised everyone by calling for more stringent penalties and stricter enforcement. Becker wanted "everyone to turn on and everyone to get busted;" it would hasten the revolution, he said. "

There were 100 to 125 spectators on each day of the hearings and WETA carried some of the proceedings so, as Chaiman Hahn hoped, there was ample opportunity for "educating the public. " And Hahn made sure there was a full and accurate record.

Noting that Surgeon General Steinfeld had referred to the famous Alice B. Toklas marijuana or hash brownies but claimed the recipe was not to be found in Alice's cookbook, Hahn opened the second day of hearings by setting the record straight. You will find the recipe on page 273 of Alice B. Toklas, announced Hahn, and having fulfilled his public responsibility, he ordered the proceedings to proceed.

Thomas Shales, now with the Washington Post, covered television and theater for us back then. And one 1970 article included this commentL:

Thomas Shales - In one significant way, this new TV season will be different. The networks have launched an even greater effort to please the media-mad Nixon Administration. The most obvious element will be the torrent of programs on drugs--little fright show peep shows which the Administration requested as part of its anti-drug campaign. Variety reports that "virtually every dramatic series and, in some instances, even comedies"--as well as daytime soap operas--will feature stories about the drug menace.

NBC thought it could go this gambit one better and get even more kissy-faced with the Nixon gang by inviting Mr. Dick himself to appear on "The Name of the Game" when it does its obligatory drug story. The chief executive, as he is sometimes called - and let's make no mistakes about that - would, naturally, portray himself (that is, his latest self, or the self of the moment, or the image self, or whatever).

Nixon declined this opportunity to repeat his "Laugh-In" triumph, instead will send Robert Finch before the cameras.

You can see it now, can't you? Thousands of American youth put down their roach holders, needles, spoons, pills and water pipes when they find out 'that the folks in Mayberry simply do not approve of such behavior. Why, what would Aunt Bee. say if she caught young Opie whiffing opium? (We may soon find out). Yes, Nixon has certainly come up with the answer, and the TV networks, anxious for any easy ways to protect their investment from government interference without additional expense, have fallen into line like good sheep that they are.

SUPER BOWL TO RUN RELIGIOUS EXTREMIST ADS

Think Progress - Firedoglake reports that Focus On the Family, an ultra-right Christian group, is poised to drop $4 million on a Super Bowl commercial aimed at promoting its anti-choice propaganda. According to sources:

"A source says the new head of Focus, Jim Daly, spoke at an evangelical conference a few months ago and unveiled the Super Bowl ad plan. Then he begged for donations from like-minded organizations. According to the source, Daly was given about $3 million, and Focus dipped into its general fund for the other $1 million."

. . In the past, neither anti-abortion nor pro-choice ads have been able to pass the television network and NFL approval process.

ARMY SUICIDES HIT A RECORD

Jason Diz, AFP - Calling 2009 a "painful year," the US Army announced that it faced a record number of suicides among Army personnel, with 160 active-duty soldiers taking their own lives.

This surpassed the previous record of 140 in 2008, and the previous record before that was 115 in 2007. The Army has been keeping track of suicides since 1980, with the level suddenly rising to epidemic levels in recent years.

But despite the expectation that endless combat deployments would be playing a role in the deaths, officials say that about 1/3 of the soldiers who took their lives this year hadn't yet been sent on any combat missions.

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